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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/09/23/DI2005092301292.html
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Sports: Soccer
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Do you have questions about D.C. United? MLS? National team? Europe?
Steven Goff: Greetings, everyone! Bring it on...
Germantown, Md.: Keep up the great coverage in the paper!
Baseball stadium, baseball stadium, baseball stadium. Now the city is going over budget on how much the land for their precious baseball stadium will cost. Please tell me the new ownership group is keeping Mayor Williams to his word and we will have a Soccer Stadium by 2007. Or that the team has had a long hard look at the MD/VA suburbs.
Steven Goff: Baseball stadium has huge public financing, soccer stadium allegedly will be mostly private financing. So it's hard to compare the two projects.
Can't see a soccer stadium in the suburbs, however. DC or bust...
Washington, D.C.: Why hasn't Jonathan Spector gotten more shots on the national team? I know he's been fighting injuries lately, but I would assume that a defender good enough to play for Man. United (and now Charlton) would have gotten more attention from Arena.
Steven Goff: Now that the USA has qualified for the World Cup, Coach Bruce Arena will begin looking at younger players to complement his veterans. I'm sure Spector will get a chance to impress the coaching staff over the next few months.
Bummed, Va.: Still bummed by DC United's collapse against Cotalica. And then the US U-17 team loses to Holland. Send me some good news, Steve!
Steven Goff: It's a gorgeous day in Washington, WPFW is playing some great old-school jazz and there's Champions League on the tele later. How's that, Senor Bummed?
Philadelphia, Pa.: Liverpool or Chelsea today (the game is at Anfield)?
Chelsea is in great form, but playing at Anfield will be difficult. Should be a great match...
(How's that for a cop out?)
Bethesda, Md.: Hi Steve and thanks for these chats.
Do you know how MLS decides which playoff teams are "home" for their games? I'm trying to get tickets should United make it, but I can't figure out whether any playoff game they make will be played at home.
Steven Goff: In the first round of the playoffs, the higher seed hosts the second game of the home-and-home series. So at the moment, if things remain the way they are, DC would play at Chicago on Oct. 22-23 and host the Fire at RFK on Oct. 29 or 30. Television could dictate the day and time, however.
Anonymous: What can you tell us about Lucio Filomeno? Besides what you already said in your article...
Steven Goff: From a distance, he physically looks like Batistuta (long hair, etc)! Don't think he plays like him, though. We'll see how this works out. It's so late in the season, hard to join a club and fit into the system.
Herndon, Va.: Gomez left the Catolica match limping pretty badly. Is this hernia related or is there another problem?
Steven Goff: He's had an ongoing hernia situation for quite a while -- it almost required surgery. However, from what I've heard, he is okay at the moment. Won't matter this weekend, however, because he's suspended for yellow card accumulation.
What's the word on the visa status for DCU's new Argentine forward?
Also, a couple weeks ago you mentioned that Esky could return within a few weeks. That, of course, was shocking to hear. Is there really any chance or indication that Eskandarian could make any sort of return to the team this year, even with the reserves? Even if he was technically available, wouldn't it be wiser for United to just have him hold off until next year?
Steven Goff: Argentine awaiting his work visa. Should get it next week, but you never know.
Alecko is required to go at least a week without headaches before being allowed to begin light workouts. He has passed that threshold and is doing some stuff in the weight room, bicycle, etc. If he can go headache-free for another week or so, he'll be allowed to step on the field. Realistically, however, after not playing for several months, I can't imagine he will play in a real game this season. We'll see...
Arlington, Va.: I'm not so sad that DCU is out of this Sudamericana thing because all of the extra games and travel at this time of year would have been real killers. I understand the new Argie is a goalscorer according to your article today, but doesn't DC need better defense not more goals? Erpen has been a bit of a disappointment to me. I'm not sure he is much of an upgrade over Boswell as he makes so many bone-headed mistakes and overcommits way more than a central defender should.
Steven Goff: Like it or not, DCU is happy with its defensive corps. The club feels this new Argentine forward could help with its finishing in late-game situations.
In general, the current roster is good enough to win the MLS title again. Whether they do it or not remains to be seen.
Washington, D.C.: Why can't Andy Williams stay with an MLS team for more than two years. He seems like a good player to me.
Steven Goff: He has his moments, but often drifts in and out of games. Salt Lake's miserable season isn't helping his image.
Alexandria, Va.: Steve: Why doesn't MLS keep the home-and-home playoff structure throughout the playoffs? I can somewhat understand that, for the finals, one game works if you're going to play on neutral ground, but for the conference finals, it seems silly to go from home-and-home to one-and-done.
Steven Goff: Yes, very strange. It's almost as if, after an endless regular season, MLS just wants to get it over with and turns to the one-game conference final. More seriously, the one-game conference final rewards the higher seed for their accomplishments in the regular season. It certainly helped DCU last year and I imagine New England would enjoy playing at Foxboro (if they wrap up the top seed and advance).
Middletown, Del.: When will DC announce the signing of Lucio Filomeno? Is he currently training with the team still awaiting his visa? Do you expect him to have any impact at all on this season?
Steven Goff: As stated in today's story, the team will officially announce his arrival when the visa and international clearance are approved. Should happen next week.
Washington, D.C.: Now that the USMNT has qualified, who do you see them playing for their WC warm-up friendlies?
Steven Goff: There will be several World Cup tuneups early next year, home and away. Nothing is official, but the most prominent match will probably be against Germany over there in March.
Is it pretty much assumed among soccer circles that Arena will be back as U.S. coach after 2006? Would he want the job for another cycle?
Steven Goff: Good question. It's rare for national team coaches to stick around after one World Cup, never mind two. Bruce will have some options next year. He has a passion to coach an English club, but not sure if that will happen. He could return to MLS.
Fredericksburg, Va.: What's your prediction for the Seattle/Richmond USL Championship on Saturday?
Steven Goff: Nice to see the Kickers in the final. The game is in Seattle, right? Hard to win a trophy on the road.
Burke, Va.: Can't Bruce find a better right back than Frankie Hedjuk????? I know he's fast, but c'mon.
Steven Goff: One of the big questions for Arena leading to the World Cup is the outside back positions. Not a lot of depth there. Hejduk is experienced, fast and has played well for the national team -- not the best defender, but an effective player. When healthy, however, Steve Cherundolo seems to be the top choice at right back. As for the left, Eddie Lewis has done well in qualifying after dropping back from midfield.
Fairfax, Va: Can you go over the playoff ramifications for DC United in terms of a 2nd place finish vs. a 3rd place finish vs. a 4th place finish?
Steven Goff: If you finish fourth, you probably have to face an awfully good New England team right away. Also, if you were to advance, you have no chance to host the one-game conference final. Second and third place don't matter very much -- lower seed hosts the first game, higher seed the second game (which includes overtime and a penalty kick tiebreaker, if the series is even).
MLS Awards: Just a few matches left in the MLS regular season. Give us your picks for:
Defensive player of the year:
Comeback player of the year:
Biggest bust of the year:
Steven Goff: MVP: Twellman, De Rosario, Donovan, Gomez, in that order.
Defensive: No one stands out at the moment.
Coach: Kinnear at San Jose.
Comeback: Hmmm, I'd have to think about that.
Bust: Steve Guppy!! I don't know, maybe Ramirez at LA. Probably Mathis at Salt Lake.
S. Rockville, Md.: Which Maryland team is the real deal? Does U-Va. have what it takes to reach the College Cup?
Steven Goff: I haven't paid too much attention to the college soccer season, but the Terps have had trouble converting their chances. Nonetheless, they should be a top 10 team. Virginia off to a very good start, but they always seem to stumble in the NCAA quarterfinals. Team to watch: Georgetown!
Bethesda, Md.: With Gomez out this Saturday, do you expect Adu to fill in at A-Mid, or is he still only a 20-minute sub at forward in Novak's mind? And if it isn't Freddie, who? Quaranta? Moreno?
Steven Goff: Great question. Adu would make sense, but Nowak might end up dropping Moreno into midfield and playing Quaranta and Adu or Walker up front. Quaranta in a central attacking midfield role intrigues me. You never know what Peter is going to do.
Fairfax,VA: With one season under their belts, how did the Nats and DC United's Front Offices co-exist? Any foreseeable changes for next season?
Steven Goff: They seemed to get along just fine. The only major issue was the field condition. Frankly, I am surprised no one got hurt on the temporary turf covering the baseball infield during the MLS matches.
Jonathan, Los Angeles: Hi Steven, any thoughts on which Brazillians get left out of the mix for next year's world cup team? Is Ronaldo's time as the lead striker done? Will Adriano make the starting squad?
Steven Goff: The Big 5 for Brazil is insane! Ronaldo, Adriano, Robinho, Kaka and Ronaldinho. Parreira can only start four of em. Should be an interesting buildup to the Cup for the Brazilians. I can't imagine Adriano not starting.
Washington, D.C.: Have any of the declared or undeclared DC mayorial candidates other than Williams taken a position on a potential SSS?
Steven Goff: I haven't heard anything, but I don't think it's a high priority at the moment.
NoVa: With SJ and KC fighting to stay where they are, and a host of cities looking to become the next home of an MLS franchise, what cities do you see getting/losing a team by 2007?
Steven Goff: Imagine if San Jose wins MLS Cup...and then has to move to Houston?! Could happen. I think the league would like to remain in those markets, but until local investors are secured, it's going to be an issue. Toronto is looking like a probable destination for a current team or an expansion club in the near future.
Alexandria, Va.: Great job as always Steven!
Is United's stadium plans so far along that when they sent season ticket renewal offers they are reserving priority seating in a new stadium for the 2008 season?
Second part, Ray Hudson has already predicted DC United will be in MLS Cup this year, any thoughts?
Steven Goff: Clever marketing technique by DCU.
Like many observers, Hudson likes DCU down the stretch. But for DC to do it, they will have to get past a difficult first round opponent and then probably have to win at New England...and then, perhaps, beat a San Jose team that is on a great roll.
Mt Kisco, N.Y.: How do you send the end of World Cup qualification in Europe in a couple of weeks playing out? Who will suprise and get into the finals and who will suprise and not get there?
Steven Goff: England is in a bit of trouble, but I think they'll win the group. If not, there's always the Euro playoff to earn a bid.
The best group involves France, Ireland, Switzerland and Israel. This could unfold in many different ways. With Zidane back, it's hard to bet against France.
Beaverton, Ore.: Have you heard who will be called up by Arena to play Costa Rica? How about Santino?
Steven Goff: Yes, Santino is very likely for CR. And there might be a surprise from the DCU roster for the finale against Panama. I will address that in a few days. (Sorry!!)
Alexandria, Va.: Why did the Washington Post not send a reporter to Santiago to cover the second leg of the Copa Sudamerica quarterfinals? This match was one of the most important of the year for D.C. United -- it would have been nice to have your perspective rather than a bland AP report?
Steven Goff: Hey, man, that was no bland AP report -- that was my very quick write-up while sitting in the office and getting updates from a friend watching the game on TV!
Santiago is a very expensive trip. If it had been a later round of the tournament, I probably would've found a way to go. However, your concern is a legitimate one and should be addressed to the editors at sports@washpost.com
Arlington, Va.: In your opinion, do you think Lionel Messi has the potential to be as good as Maradona? I watched that game yesterday and even though Ronaldinho got the goals (don't get me wrong, Ronaldinho is ridiculously good), that first one was all set up by the speed and control of Messi. Anyhow, I think he might be the best player under 20, and I'm a big Rooney fan.
Steven Goff: Messi is going to be very good, but the next Maradona?? Nah.
Fairfax, Va.: Who do you think will win the Champion's league this year? My money's on Barcalona, but I wouldn't be shocked if you thought Chelsea.
Steven Goff: My heart says Barcelona, but Juventus, Chelsea and many others are legitimate contenders.
Gaithersburg, Md.: Any idea how United's TV ratings compare to the Capitals, Wizards or Orioles?
Steven Goff: I've never seen the numbers and I'm not sure Comcast makes them available. However, I would imagine DCU is behind the Orioles and Wizards but ahead of our local minor league hockey team.
Oakland, Calif.: Lots of Quaranta controversy on BigSoccer.com. He is getting a shot at r-mid for the Nats but hasnt really played that position for DC United. Arena makes a comment about needing to play the position with the club, and Nowak starts him a few times at R-mid - didnt see that as all that successful. I personally think he is the heir to Moreno (or closest thing) - as a withdrawn/playmaking forward.
What are your thoughts on Quaranta's development as a player and his position and where he should play for DCU/MNT? And is he off to Europe in two years?
Steven Goff: It's not uncommon for a player to fill different roles for club and country. I like Santino on the right side (and he has played there for DCU), but at the moment, when his roster is healthy, Nowak needs him upfront. In the long run, Quaranta's versatility will probably get him a spot on the World Cup roster.
Boz-ville: Havent seen much on this, so I thought I'd ask.:
How has Bobby Boswell taken going to the bench? He is obviously a talented young defender who really loves playing and winning - and he's great to the fans. But of course he has made some costly mistakes. I just wouldnt want him to take a step back and lose confidence etc. Its tough cause if DCU played a 442, Erpen and Boswell would be great in the center, but alas Nowak uses a 3-5-2.
Steven Goff: Good question. It's an issue I will address in the paper in the next week or so. Gotta be awfully hard to play every minute to not playing at all.
Washington, D.C.: Will Arena use his European-based players for the remainder of the CONCACAF qualifying? Shouldn't it be their goal to win the group outright?
Steven Goff: Nah, the World Cup berth is secure. At this point, it doesn't matter where you finish in the group (other than to stick it to Mexico again and perhaps improve your FIFA ranking). The priority for Arena is to test younger players and give his Euro-based players a break from national team duty.
Arlington, Va.: How worried should we be that DCU can't seem to finish off games? The game in Chile was in the bag, or should have been at 2-0, but a couple of poor plays and boom, another late game loss.
Steven Goff: If that had been an MLS game, DCU would've won it. But in international play, especially on the road, it's much more difficult.
A huge missed opportunity for United and MLS. Until they start winning these type of matches, the league's global reputation will remain the same.
Washington, D.C.: How do we get your editors to list the EPL and other pro league games shown on Fox Soccer Channel in the daily TV listings?
Steven Goff: Many digital cable and satellite TV outlets are not listed in the radiotv schedule on page 2 -- it's not just Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV that get ignored. (ESPNU, CSTV, Tennis, Golf, SpeedChannel, etc). Those listings are for mainstream purposes only. Besides, with so much available to American soccer fans these days, I don't think we have enough space to list every match every day!
D.C.: Are you hearing (or have you heard) anything about any of the U-17 National Team players, who just finished up in Peru, going pro now that the tournament is over?
Best wishes to Kevin Alston for a quick recovery, by the way.
Steven Goff: Haven't heard any specifics. Most will go on to college. Local guy Alston is headed to Indiana.
Herndon, Va.: Steven, can you please give us an update on the new stadium.
Herndon, Va.: Steven, can you share any insight on possible coaching changes in the MLS? A national soccer show listed Bob Bradley on the "hot seat."
Steven Goff: Columbus seems to be leaning toward Sigi Schmid. Sampson and Bradley could be out. Ellinger is having a wretched year in Salt Lake. We'll see this offseason...
Did Clyde Simms do something to upset Novak? He goes from being on the National team to not even getting mop-up minutes in MLS. Or are there just too many players fighting for too few spots?
Steven Goff: When DCU's at full strength, it's hard for Simms to crack the lineup. But he's a young player with a bright future.
Steven Goff: That's it, guys. Thanks for tuning in. We'll do it again in two weeks. As always, feel free to reach me directly at goffs@washpost.com
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Join live discussions from the Washington Post. Feature topics include national, world and DC area news, politics, elections, campaigns, government policy, tech regulation, travel, entertainment, cars, and real estate.
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Understanding Linux
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Linux experts Marcel Gagne and Peter van der Linden , who recently published new books on the subject, were online Wednesday, Sept. 28 at Noon ET to answer questions about the open source operating system, which is often used as an alternative to Microsoft Windows.
Gagne, known as "Canada's Linux Guru," is the award-winning author of the Linux Journal "Cooking with Linux" series. He recently published the second edition of his popular book, "Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!" As a an authority among the Linux and open source world, Gagne's work includes articles on the subject for publications such as the Linux Journal, InformIT, Unix Review, and SysAdmin magazine.
Van der Linden, the author of computer books "Just Java" and "Expert C Programming," recently published "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux." The book details the popular operating system. He currently works in the Silicon Valley as a software consultant specializing in Linux and open source software.
Bethesda, MD: Linux is a wonderful operating system but like Solaris and other UNIX and UNIX-like systems it has trouble competing with Windows because it has a poor user interface. From a computer science point of view Linux beats Windows easily, but from a user point of view the opposite is true and proven by the marketplace.
I believe for Linux or any operating system to succeed it must have a good user interface. Mac OS X which is UNIX based has a great interface (Aqua). I considered buying one to replace my old PC but when I compared the price of a Mac Mini to a PC, the PC has twice of everything (disk, memory, etc...). If the costs were equivalent I would have bought the Mac. If Linux systems had a decent interface I would probably buy one of them as well.
When will Linux system have an interface equivalent to Aqua or Windows?
Peter van der Linden: Hi man from Bethesda,
You raise an insightful point. Often people get used to one particular style of interface, and come to regard that as the "gold standard". However, I can see that you are more flexible because of the way you looked into the Mac Mini.
I agree, Apple does set the standard for GUIs and even OSs, right now. But Sun Microsystems is doing interesting work with 3D GUIs, too, based on Java, and available now in alpha on Linux.
For me though, the bottom line is that, when I am trying to get something done, I care little for window adornments, shading, gee-gaws, and trinkets. As long as my spreadsheet works, I am fine with it.
People who do place a very high priority on these visual refinements will probably be happiest sticking with the Mac or whatever they are used to, for the foreseeable future.
Baltimore, Md.: I'm submitting early due to another appointment.
I'm a fairly knowledgeable computer user who was given some Ubuntu CD's to try. I liked the live version enough to actually install it on an older PC (dual booting it with Windows).
Question: We're using a Netgear USB wireless adapter on this computer, which isn't recognized by Ubuntu. The Live version didn't recognize the built-in wirless adapter in my Dell Inspirion 9100 laptop either. Is wireless support a problem for Linux in general (or just in Dell products, or USB)?
Ubuntu had no problem recognized the who-knows-what brand Ethernet adapters these PC's had.
I would gladly switch my other PC's to Linux except for the wirless problem that I'm having (all my PC's are using USB wireless adapters, except the Dell laptop)
Peter van der Linden: Wireless over USB is still an emerging technology in Linux.
Your best bet to get this working is to review the hardware compatibility list for Ubuntu, and see if it even has any wifi usb devices. If so try one from the list. Buy it from a store with a good return policy.
Sorry - there will be better news eventually. In the meantime, I put a whole section on "wifi troubleshooting" in chapter 4 of PvdL's Guide to Linux. It gives you all the info to take it further.
For completeness, I should also mention the use of ndiswrapper - it's a project at sourceforge that can sometimes get a wifi chip working, using a Windows .inf driver config file.
Marcel Gagne: Peter mentioned ndiswrapper, a program I have to endorse in a big way. I wrote about ndiswrapper in the September issue of Linux Journal (I'll add it to my Website in the next couple of days if you can't find it). Now that I think about it, I also demonstrated on "Call for Help", but I digress. Basically, ndiswrapper makes it possible for Linux to use the Windows wireless driver. It's fantastic. For a non-free alternative, you might also want to check out Linuxant's DriverLoader program at http://www.linuxant.com.
La Crosse, Wis.: what about support for windows games that do not have linux sopport? and what about older windows games and apps. I myself play alot of older dos games
Marcel Gagne: The quick answer to this is to try out a product called Cedega, available at http://www.transgaming.com. This is a highly tweaked version of the WINE program that lets you run Windows programs under Linux. Cedega is specifically geared to work with Windows games.
Madrid, Spain: What advantages would a teacher-cum-PC-user gain from partitioning his hard drive for Linux and Windows? What should be his main concerns?
As a non- techie I really enjoy these techie pages.
Peter van der Linden: Hi Colin,
There are three main advantages to a dual boot PC:
1. you extend your PC knowledge and abilities. As a teacher I am sure you welcome and support new learning abilities.
2. when booted in Linux, you are immune to the flodding torrent of Windows-based spyware and viruses. Completely immune!
3. when running Linux, you are able to tap into the (literally) thousands of open source programs - download them to your system and start using them. People who are able to program can also change and customize this pool of free software.
So those are 3 great advantages to a dual-boot PC.
Philadelphia, Pa.: How soon before Linux applications become a viable desktop competitor with Windows applications?
Marcel Gagne: The short answer is right now! There are plenty of Linux desktop applicationst that are every bit as good as and sometimes better than the Windows alternatives. For the Linux-shy out there, some of these applications are also available for Windows (OpenOffice.org, GAIM, Thunderbird, Firefox, Blender, and more). The question isn't one of when it will be viable, but rather when people will realize that Linux is already an answer to most people's desktop computing needs.
Annapolis, Md.: Even with enough practice how long do you think an average user will take to be comfortable with linux?
Peter van der Linden: I was stunned to see that one of my family members picked up Linux within a week with a few minutes practice each day.
Let's face it: GUIs are a mature technology these days. Just as every car has a standard way to drive, so all computers now come with windows, scroll bars, menubars, and a "start" menu.
You can engage with that immediately, and your fingers are retrained within a couple of days. You are productive pretty much at once, so don't let anxiety about loss of productivity hold you back.
There's a deeper level to Linux - the sys admin and installation stuff. But no one has to engage with that if they don't want to. Many people find it fun to explore.
They best way to learn linux is to buy a PC with Linux preinstalled. My local Frys (large electronic retailer) currently sells a PC with Linux for $175! You can really get prices down when you don't have to pay the Windows monopoly tax to Microsoft!
Arlington, Va.: How is the Linux desktop evolving and when will it be mature enough to be easily manageable - much like Windows or Mac.
I've used several distros over the past few years and I always run into a brick wall with a device driver, screen configuration, network or printing configuration issue. Even with my decent sysadmin skills it's difficult at best and always time consuming to configure, manage and maintain a Linux desktop.
I'm a big fan of Linux and OpenSource, but the simple fact is that it's hard to work with. Is this changing?
Peter van der Linden: My view is that Linux desktops are moving forward far faster than the Microsoft desktop.
Windows XP was released around 2001 and the Vista (next release) isn't until available until 2006 at the earliest. 4 or 5 years of stalling is a long time between releases.
And when Vist (the XP follow on) finally arrives, it won't have WinFS, the searchable filesystem, that was promised, and that MacOS X has today.
The question of device drivers is a different issue. That is best dealt with by getting Linux the same way you get Windows - buy a system with Linux preinstalled. Convert it to a dual boot system by installing Windows if you are anchored to some must-have legacy Windows app.
Brampton, Canada: There are a large number of Linux distributions to choose from. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of concrete comparisons between the choices to guide a "Linux-curious" person in their selection of a Linux system.
Do you have any advice for the "Linux-curious" person on how to select a Linux distribution? What did you choose, when you were starting out, and why?
The best thing to start with, if you are curious and not sure where to start, is one of the so-called live distributions, like Knoppix. This lets you try out Linux without having to commit (or install to your hard drive). My book, "Moving to Linux" includes such a CD for that reason. When I started, there was Slackware and it came on a handful of diskettes. These days I tend to recommend that people look at some of the mature distributions like Mandriva, SUSE, Fedora, and others. Sometimes, the best choice is to run what your friends are running. At least then, you are on the same page and can share information.
Under the hood, every Linux distribution is quite similar. To understand all these different flavors of Linux, think about automobiles. In the Windows world, there's one model, available in black. If you don't like it, there's no other vendor you can go to. The Linux world is more like the automotive world in that you have lots of choice. If you don't like the service or quality you are getting from your current auto manufacturer, you can go to Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, BMW, or whatever. The difference is in what they package along with your distribution. Different look and feel, different admin tools, and so on.
Germantown, Md.: In your opinion, which distro provides the best multimedia experience out of the box? What I am interested in is something comparable to what you can get from a Windows box. This should include the easy addition of Windows codecs.
Peter van der Linden: Without any doubt, the number one distro for out-of-the-box multimedia support is Linspire. (http://linspire.com)
This is a commercial distro (so they have a support team and a very active customer forum). Being commercial, they have the funds to license all the players necessary. They support Flash. They support Java.
Some distros don't even come with an MP3 player because of licensing problems. Linspire cuts through all that and are dedicated to the best desktop experience.
I selected Linspire as the example distro in my book "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux" for these reasons. And because they are very easy for new Linux users to engage with.
Washington, D.C.: Do we really want the common, AOL type people to use Linux? Those are the people who pass the viruses and worms around by opening unknown attachments in their e-mails. These people routinely download and install "free" software without reading the EULA and have all kinds of spyware running on their computers.
When you're running Linux at least you know you're relatively safe because the bad guys are attacking the idiots running Windows. If the Linux desktop improves to the point where all of these people start to use Linux then Linux will become exposed to all of the viruses and worms that are inherent to Windows. I certainly don't want that to happen. I say we keep Linux to ourselves.
Marcel Gagne: I might turn that comment around and ask "Do we really want casual non-expert computer users to run Windows, where the risk of infection, spyware, etc, is so high?" In point of fact, I recommend Linux to people who aren't network experts because it is more secure, and no, that won't change anytime soon. The Linux security model is orders of magnitude better than Windows.
Operating a Windows system safely pretty much requires that you become a network and security expert, with the proper anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-whatever programs always on guard against intruders. Linux isn't perfect, but it doesn't demand so much from its users just to surf safely.
Munich, Germany: Prosit and Greetings from the Continent, Guys.
I'll be purchasing a new PC within the next year, and for someone who spends a lot of time on the Internet, uses many of the Microsoft Desktop Tools, is not into gaming and might work on home pages once in a while, what advantages would Linux have over Windows on my PC?
Peter van der Linden: Gruss Gott Herr Municher,
Well, the number one advantage would be that a Linux user is not easy prey for the flood of Windows-based viruses, spyware, pop-ups, and security breach-of-the-week. Linux was designed with better security, and just doesn't need the constant patching that Windows does when connected to the net.
A second advantage is that the system will be lower cost. You can use the free Open Office suite, which is compatible with the Microsoft Office suite, and there are many other high quality open source programs too.
A third advantage is that Linux doesn't enforce Digital Rights Restrictions on the PC owner the way the next release of Windows will. It will prevent you copying and playing songs on a different PC than the one you downloaded to. This is "fair use" under copyright law, but Microsoft will inhibit this kind of sharing.
There are other benefits too, but that's enough goodness for now!
La Jolla, Ca. : What do you guys see as the biggest obstacles to the Windows user who is planning to switch to Linux? How would he/she overcome these obstacles?
Marcel Gagne: The biggest obstacle is fear. Modern Linux distributions are easy to install and easy to use. Unfortunately, we are constantly presented with messages telling us that it's too hard and that the average person couldn't possibly grasp the complexity. That's rubbish.
People aren't stupid and people who use computers learn new things all the time. Every time you buy and/or install a new package, you need to learn it (even in Windows). Every time you upgrade to a new version, there are changes and you need to learn. If you upgrade from Win 9x to Win XP, you will have to relearn some things. The same is true of learning to use Linux.
My parents, who are in their late sixties, got their first computer about five years ago. They have only ever run Linux and yet they manage to write e-mails, surf the Web, chat on IM, play games, etc. In other words, everything a typical computer user does.
Linux isn't that difficult. We're just constantly told that is it and the resulting fear is the biggest obstacle. Pick u a book with a good live Linux distribution and start playing. It's fun and the fear will quickly vanish.
19th and L Streets, Washington D.C.: I have two questions:
1. What is your impression of the Ubuntu distro?
2. What are the premiere apps -- no pun intended -- for editing audio and video on Linux?
Peter van der Linden: Ubuntu is a very nice distro. I'm not a Gnome fan, which is the Ubuntu default desktop environment, but it looks and works well on Ubuntu. Ubuntu recognized a wide range of hardware when I tested it on some of my systems.
Ubuntu is one of the desktop distros that approach the "Gold Standard" set by the Linspire distro. Linspire is the biggest and best of all the dozen or so distros which specialize on the desktop.
As far as non-linear video editing - this is still an emerging technology in Linux. There are some apps to do this - some of them was extensively discussed in LinuxJournal 2 or 3 months ago. But you would be a pioneer and should expect a rocky trail.
For audio editing, a lot of people like audacity.
Confused American Consumer: Please pardon my ignorance, but I am someone who struggles with new technology and I am indeed learning it. I am reading your discussion and I find I am lost because of one key essential detail: What is Linux?
Peter van der Linden: Linux is an operating system which controls your PC. It is an alternative to Windows.
Linux has been under development for about 14 years, and has steadily grown in popularity. Many people, including Bill Gates and other executives at Microsoft think that Linux will grow so quickly that it will take away really large amount of monopoly super-profits from Windows.
For this reason, Microsoft conducts a relentless, expensive, and basically dishonest PR campaign against Linux, calling it "communist" and "a cancer".
While Microsoft is making itself look ridiculous, the rest of the world is starting to find out whether Linux can help them on their PC.
One of the qualities of Linux, apart from its immunity to Windows viruses, is its very low cost - much cheaper than the $200 Windows XP Pro and the $500 Microsoft Office suite. One of the ways to find out more about Linux is to read my book "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux".
Portland, Oregon: How compatible is Linux with 3rd party hardware?
Can I walk into Fry's and buy a new video card or USB2 PCI card, plug it into my Linux system and expect it to work?
That's one positive I see about Windows everywhere is third party hardware support.
Marcel Gagne: The hardware support for Linux is, quite honestly, among the best there is. In fact, when you consider all the platforms that run Linux, its hardware and peripheral support is better than that of the Windows system you are leaving behind. Unfortunately, there are some consumer devices designed with Windows specifically in mind. Consequently, certain printers or scanners may have limited support under Linux because the manufacturer is slow in providing drivers. That said, the vast majority of standard devices work very well and you aren't likely to run into too many problems.
On the upside, you'll find that where you always had to load drivers to make something run in your old OS, Linux automatically recognizes and supports an amazing number of peripherals without you having to do anything extra or hunt down a driver disk. Furthermore, the Linux community is vibrant in a way that few businesses can ever hope to be. If you have your eye on a hot new piece of hardware, you can almost bet that some Linux developer somewhere has an eye on exactly the same thing.
As time goes on and more and more people run Linux, hardware issues become less of a problem.
Remember, though, that Windows isn't perfect either. Not every device works with every version of Windows and upgrading sometimes means leaving old hardware behind. Windows does not have perfect hardware support.
wiredog: I got my linux box (Fedora at the time, Ubuntu now) up on a 802.11g wireless network by buying an ethernet-wifi bridge. A bit pricey, but works with any distro, and cuts down on cables stretched across the floor.
Been subscribing to LJ since 98 or so, using Linux about as long (when did RedHat 4.2 come out? I remember the big stack of floppies...).
Marcel, what Wine do you and Francoise serve with Ubuntu?
Marcel Gagne: With Ubuntu, I would recommend a spicy and robust red such as one of the fine Barossa Valley Shiraz wines. If you take your seat, I'll send Francois down to the cellar immediately.
Washington, D.C.: I have been a Mac user for about 20 odd years now and when Mac came out with a FreeBSD core, I decided I'd give that a stab. I installed it on an old PC a friend gave to me (he bought a Mac) and after some fits and starts getting things to work, now use it as a backup machine for my Macs.
But now that I've gone through all that, I kind of wonder if I shouldn't have made that a LINUX machine instead of a Freebsd box. Are there any major advantages of LINUX vs. FreeBSD (I know this is flame war material for the slashdot crowd, but was wondering what are the real differences).
Peter van der Linden: For the vast majority of users, there are no visible differences between a FreeBSD kernel and a Linux kernel.
For most people, their computing experience is defined by the GUI and their apps.
Very sophisticated software professionals often have strongly-held preferences about one Unix flavor over another. But honestly, the biggest differences are in the licenses covering their use.
Carry on using FreeBSD with a clear conscience. Dabble in Linux for fun when you have some time and want to engage with it.
If you read slashdot with a filter that screens out posts scoring less than 4, it's actually a pretty good news aggregation site, in spite of the sometimes uneven editing/story sourcing. I usually check it out daily.
Wasilla, AK: My understanding is that updating programs or upgrading the operating system can be quite difficult in Linux.
Peter van der Linden: Yes, historically, Linux has been a "leading edge" technology that placed strong technical requirements on users.
In the last 4 or 5 years, that has changed radically. If you pick a Linux distribution (brand or "flavor") that specializes on the desktop, you will today find a very different, much improved situation.
One particular distribution is well in the lead in providing an excellent desktop experience for non-technical end users. This is the Linspire distribution, and I chose it as the example Linux in my book "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux" for this reason.
Also, for a new person to Linux, I would recommend acquiring Linux the same way you acquired Windows - buy a system which comes with Linux preinstalled. Many companies sell them, including Wal-Mart.
Sorrento Hills, Ca.: How critical is the use of open standards in file format compatibility?
Marcel Gagne: This ties in very well to what is happening in the state of Massachusetts where open document formats are now required. There's nothing more annoying than trying to open your own personal documents a few years later and discovering that you can't with the new software package you are using.
I believe that standards, more importantly open standards, are critical for the future of information exchange and archival. Consider that some older formats of proprietary "standards" are no longer readable by more modern versions of the same package. We should be alarmed (and frankly angry) that the data we own is no longer accessible because of some company's closed format. Do we really want to risk that critical archives . . . historical archives, are lost because we tied ourselves to a proprietary format. It's a frightening thought, or at least it should be.
It's a bit dated now, but check out "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson. Some interesting discussions on this topic.
Bolingbrook, Ill.: First, congrats to Peter on your new book on Linux and to Marcel for a second edition. Both are wonderful books. Now, my question: Do you feel there needs to be a change in the approach that the "elite" take in explaining Linux to the "newbies"? If so, what can we do better to have open arms as well as open source?
Marcel Gagne: Thank you for the congrats and for a great question.
I think it is vital that we start presenting Linux in as friendly a manner as possible. Linux gets a lot of underserved bad press for being too complex and difficult for the average person. This is, of course, nonsense. Linux is ready for the vast majority of computer users. We, as users (and in the case of Peter and I, as authors) need to get that message across.
Can you imagine the reaction at /.?
Peter van der Linden: Oh yeah, some of the slashdotters would go nuts and run about in small circles waving their arms. Others would be developing a plan whose last steps are
The thing is though, that it is inevitable that Microsoft will eventually have to make some kind of accommodation with Linux. Whether it is porting some of their apps to Linux, or buying their own distro, or just ceasing the ridiculous "Linux is a cancer" FUD campaign.
Microsoft is an unregulated monopoly that has proven its willingness to break the law and exploit consumers over an extended period. All other monopolies are regulated in the US - the power company, the phone company, the water company, the gas company. But for historic reasons, Microsoft evaded that kind of regulation, and showed to the world why it is that we regulate super-monopolies.
The next chapter is still to unfold, but basically, Microsoft cannot abuse its market position to undercut Linux, the way it undercut Borland, Netscape, Sun, STAC, etc etc. Therefore an accommodation is the long term stable configuration.
Seattle, Wa.: Here at the UW in Seattle - which Linux distro works best with an AMD wireless b/g laptop and why?
Also, when will they port The Sims 2 to Linux - it's the only reason I have a WinXP OS in the first place ...
Peter van der Linden: Hi Will,
Different distros bundle different drivers, so the best approach here is to download the live CD from several distros, and try each to find one that works for you. It's a question of which drivers they bundle.
Pick the desktop distros to begin with - first Linspire, then the second tier like Ubuntu, Mepis, Knoppix, Xandros etc. There's a longer list at distrowatch.org.
There are a couple of other tricks to get wireless working - you can find out which chipset is in the wireless, and hence which driver to look for. You can try the ndiswrapper project to reuse the Windows .inf driver config file. I explain more about wifi troubleshooting in chapter 4 of my book.
I won't speculate about games ports to Linux! Suffice it to say that Linux is currently not a good choice of platform for those whose first priority is games (as you are aware).
Sydney, Australia: Marcel & Peter,
Where do you see Linux sitting in relation to Mac OS/X and do you think there is a possibility of both OS's being able to co-exist in today's marketplace against Windows ?
Do you envisage any synergy between them for the Open Source community ?
I think Mac and Linux are already co-existing quite well, jokes about "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" aside. I find it amazing that people question the possibility that the world only has room for one OS. In pretty much every aspect of life, we have choices from a multitude of manufacturers and in the end, it's good for all of us. The world of the personal computer has been a little sick of late, but as long as Mac and Linux remain vibrant and continue to grow, there's hope.
Since much of the code is open source, there is shared development happening between the two. One project that comes immmediately to mind is Mac's Safari browser which was based on KDE's Konqueror. Code changes from both have flowed back into their respective products.
Julian, Ca.: I have tried various Linux distros and I can get them to install but once it is installed, I can never get my hardware working or figure how to install software! Why is it so darned difficult to install software with Linux?! Why can't they make it as easy as Windows where you just double-click on a file to install it?
Peter van der Linden: Julian -- what a frustratinbg experience for you. You probably just haven't found the right distro yet.
There are big differences between the distros in terms of install and use ease. A couple of weeks ago, just for fun, I installed Slackware. Only three hours later I had it running, but I would not recommend that to someone who just wants something that they can use immediately.
The distro that installs the fastest and easiest is Linspire - the current recordholder did a Linspire install in 4 mins 28 seconds! It takes me 15 minutes, and it will take you about the same amount of time, too.
Linspire also has a GREAT feature called Click N Run (CNR) that is a subscription service that lets you install new apps with one click of your mouse. I recommend you try linspire.com - and there's an active customer forum too.
Oceanside, Ca.: I have read "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux" and it really helped me to get started with Linux. Thank's for such an excellent book Peter!
Question: Do you feel that there will be any sort of 'consolidation' in the Linux field? Right now there are thousands and thousands of different versions of Linux to choose from and it is confusing to new users. Do you ever think we will get to a point where there will be a version of Linux that everyone knows about and understands?
Peter van der Linden: Well, thanks for the feedback. I wanted to write a book that would help people who are familiar with Windows, and let them engage with Linux easily and cheaply.
I think we are already seeing consolidation in the Linux world, and this will be an increasing trend. Lycoris just got folded in Mandriva (new name for Mandrake). SUSE was bought by Novell.
Many of the distros cooperate with each other - the Debian Common Core Alliance is one example. Ubuntu's wish to work in concert with Linspire is another.
Although distrowatch.org lists something like 428 distros, there are really only around one dozen top distros, and really only 1-3 contenders in each of the market segments: server distro (RedHat), desktop distro (Linspire), embedded distro. So it's coming together.
Los Angeles, Ca.: A friend of mine gave me a copy of Linux and I installed it. I have been pretty happy with it but I am having problems installing software programs. I found a cool program on www.sourceforge.net but, I can't get it to compile -- I keep getting error messages. Is there an easier way to install software with Linux? It is very frustrating to try to install software. Any suggestions?
Marcel Gagne: If you are running a modern Linux distribution, odds are you probably don't have to compile software. When people tell me they are downloading source, I generally ask them whether they've checked to see whether the package came with their distribution CDs. Vendors like SUSE, Mandriva, Xandros, and others provide simple interfaces to make software installation a breeze and most distributions come with hundreds, sometimes thousands of packages. Make it easy on yourself and use those tools. SUSE has YaST, Mandriva has the Mandrake Control Centre, Linspire has Click-N-Run, and so on.
Now, if you are trying to get some bleeding edge package or something that isn't particularly popular, you may have to go to source. In that case, check out http://www.marcelgagne.com/fivestep.html for some tips.
Wayne, NJ: For someone new to Linux who eventually wants to grow up to be a SysAdmin, what recomendations do you have for resources to learn Linux and can you recommend any print journals or online forums that would be useful for ongoing support and information?
Peter van der Linden: Excellent question. First of all, you want to pick a good book that introduces you to desktop Linux. My own text or Marcel's would be good (p.s. I like mine better). And they both come with a Live CD that lets you try Linux without installing anything - just boot from it.
Once you have the live CD thing down, you're already using Linux. Then start hanging out in the customer forums for the distro you chose. linspire.com has a VERY active customer forum, full of people exchanging ideas and helping each other - you might see me there occasionally (so say 'hi').
Then start going to the general Linux interest website:
and reading the print and online magazines:
LinuxJournal, LinuxWorld, Tux, and others.
You can round yourself out with a level 1 or 2 certification from the Linux Professional Institute as a linuxc sys-admin - see http://lpi.org
I think you will have a great deal of fun following this, and you will gain a marketable skill as well.
Germantown, Md.: I know that laptops are always a strange duck as far as hardware configurations are concerned. Unfortunately, they are becoming more prevelant than desktops in new sales. Which distro usually has the best coverage in laptop hardware support?
Marcel Gagne: As you deal with modern Linux distributions, this becomes less and less of an issue. I have a Presario 2500 series notebook here with built-in wireless, Firewire, USB 2.0, diskette, DVD player, CD burner, etc. All of those things worked perfectly after installing Mandriva 2005 and SUSE 9.3 (and more recently OpenSUSE 10.0). The only issue I had (and SUSE took care of that) was that my wireless card couldn't 'scan'. I've been using notebooks as my desktop system for about six years now and I haven't felt as though I'm missing much (I've been using Linux as my desktop OS since 1996).
Pacific Beach, Ca.: With the Debian Common Core Alliance formation, will application creation become closer to standardized simplifying installation for the end user???
Peter van der Linden: When I was at the most recent LinuxWorld in San Francisco in August to launch my book "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux" (and what a nightmare our booth was - we were right next to a booth that had a fullsize rodeo mechanical bull - not just on display, but available for intrepid people to ride!!! - You try giving a talk on desktop Linux, when you're competing with a cowboy shill!) .... when I was there, I spent some time visiting with the Debian Common Core Alliance and understanding their aims and strategy.
It boils down to this - Linux has already conquered the server market, where its deployments are far higher quality and more robust than Windows. Linux OWNS the high end cluster space - Microsoft doesn't even have any products at all in that space.
The next soft target for Linux is business/administration desktops - and that's where you see the big wins really happening now, like the high school system in in the state of Illinois, like the cities of Munich, Paris, Vienna, and cities in New Zealand, like the state of Massachusetts. Like the desktop deployment internal to IBM and Cisco. Big technical companies understand the benefits of dropping expensive incompatible insecure Windows.
The DCCA is all about improving standardization (including meeting the Linux Standard Base standard) to give commercial businesses the confidence of a single vendor-neutral consistent platform.
Phew, long answer, but yes - DCCA basically aimed at commercial users, though home users benefit on its coattails too.
What do you think will be the next "Killer APP" to appear on the Linux Platform?
Peter van der Linden: Hi John,
It's very hard to predict what the killer app will be.
How about if I predict WHO it will come from: Google.
Google is really cleaning the clock of Microsoft right now. Microsoft is having trouble shipping old software, bereft of new ideas, and measures the slippage of its Windows flagship product in YEARS.
Google comes out with genuinely innovative fresh ideas on almost a weekly basis. The latest being the VOIP "cheap phone calls" initiative. And they have just turned on a beta version wireless network in the area around my home!
I just don't see killer ideas like that coming out of Redmond.
Bethesda, Md.: Can you explain in semi-layman's terms how RedHat and other vendors are able to place their own proprietary wrappers (installation and perhaps others) around Linux?
I just paid $1500 for RH Enterprise Edition on an 8-way server, at my sysadmin's request. I understand the rationale for such an expenditure on the basis of support, but am trying to understand the bigger picture.
(Conversely I run Fedora at home)
Marcel Gagne: The reason RedHat, SUSE, Mandriva, Ubuntu, and others can do this is that the source for Linux (and much of the associated components) is distributed under a license that allows the companies to freely modify and redistribute the software with their changes included. In the case of the GPL (the most famous of the open source licenses), they must also re-release those changes back to the community so that others can take advantage of the increased functionality.
This open source license allows anyone, not just businesses, to makes changes and redistribute Linux. For example, in my "Moving to Linux : Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!", I included a modified version of the Knoppix Live CD (which I called "WFTL Knoppix"). I made changes to the distribution so that it would make a better companion to my book. The license allowed me to do that.
With RedHat's Enterprise edition, you are definitely paying for the peace of mind that comes with support and the certification that some companies (eg: Oracle, SAP) demand with the server OS. At home, this type of support isn't generally as critical.
Dutchie in Montreal, Canada: Peter, you just mentioned that you're not a big fan of Gnome (in e.g. Ubuntu). What desktop environment is your favorite and why? Can the different environments be classified somehow or do they all serve the exact same purpose and it's just the name that's different?
Peter van der Linden: Hi Dutchie, I probably put more emphasis into that than I intended. Gnome is a perfectly good desktop environment, and I am happy when I use it.
Gnome got its start when people were not happy with the licensing terms for KDE. Basically there was one TrollTech (not a joke, that's the company name) library that wasn't free under all circumstances. So people broke away to make a different window environment (same thing that was recently repeated with X.org in fact).
In the meantime, the KDE issue was fixed, and all libraries are now totally open source. But we are left with two loosely-compatible (at best) desktop environments. Competition is good - but using up scarce open source resources reinventing the wheel is bad.
For me, the bottom line is that ALL desktop environments - Windows, KDE, MacOS X, Gnome, CDE on Solaris - they all do the same thing. Providing I can get to my apps I am happy using any of them - it's mature technology these days.
When Microsoft's biggest invention of the last decade was the "clear desktop" menu entry, you know that desktop have essentially reached statis! There will be all kinds of cotton candy in Vista, but honestly, it will all be pointless tweaks.
Troy, Michigan: I recently purchased Redhat Linux for my Windows PC. What is the easiest way to install Linux so I have the option of booting my PC in Window XP or in Linux? Thanks.
Peter van der Linden: RedHat is more of a server distro, so possibly not the greatest choice for a dual-boot system that you will use as a desktop. I would encourage you to look at a distro that focuses on the desktop such as Linspire.
To create multi boot (I walk thru this in my book "Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux" at length):
1. create a second partition on the disk of 4+ GB for Linux
2. boot from the Linux install CD, and do the install
3. At each subsequent boot, you will be prompted for the OS you want to boot in, Windows or Linux.
You must install Windows first, because Windows is poorly behaved and overwrites other OS's it finds on the disk, instead of co-existing with them.
Most people who install Linux manually choose a multi-boot system and you will be able to set it up too. Look at the customer forums of your chosen distro for more help.
washingtonpost.com: Thank you Marcel and Peter for joining us today for this discussion. Do you have any final thoughts or comments?
Marcel Gagne: Thank you for having me on the chat. I had a great time and I sincerely thank all the people who asked questions today. If I have to include a closing comment, it might be this. Don't be afraid to try desktop Linux. When it's all said and done, I honestly believe that it's a better product and a better solution for most desktops. And it's more fun than Windows [ insert appropriate smiley here ].
If you want more information, check out my Website at www.marcelgagne.com. Along with the information there, I also provide a free online Linux user group (look on the left hand side menu for WFTL-LUG) where you can ask questions and chat with other Linux users (newbie and experienced) from around the world.
Thanks again, and take care out there.
Peter van der Linden: It was a pleasure to take part in this lively exchange. many thanks to our host the Washington Post and all the forum members for their insightful questions.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Linux experts Marcel Gagné and Peter van der Linden, who recently published new books on the subject, disucssed the open source operating system.
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The Reliable Source is back, under the stewardship of Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts . Appearing in the Style section on Tuesdays through Fridays and Sundays, The Reliable Source brings you gossip from across the region and around the world -- candid looks at the lives and loves and hijinks of all your favorite bold-faced names, be they congressmen or millionaires, ballplayers or newsbabes, nightlife divas or master thespians, DJs or gadflies, has-beens or will-bes.
Argetsinger and Roberts are online each Wednesday at Noon ET to discuss your favorite gossip, what you thought about their recent columns or who you want to see them writing about in future ones.
John Roberts and the Lines of Fire (Post, Sept. 28)
Picture This: Ben Affleck, Senator From Va. (Post, Sept. 27)
Argetsinger is a veteran of all those high-fiber good-for-you sections like Metro and National while Roberts brought you the champagne and bon-bons of Style's society beat.
Amy Argetsinger: Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us for our very first live chat as The Reliable Source! We're thrilled to be here, and we look forward to your questions, complaints, hot tips and suggestions of who and what you want to be reading about under the new RS regime. Any thoughts about Benator/Sennifer? Casting suggestions for "The Killing Zone"? We're eager to hear them...
Roxanne Roberts: Plus we're dying to know----okay, not dying but weak-kneed---to know who and what floats your boat, gossip-wise. Let the party begin.
Rosslyn, Va.: Senator Affleck? Really? The Dems can't find anyone else? Is Matt Damon available? At least he went to Harvard.
Amy Argetsinger: Sure, but he's not moving to Virginia. Location, location, location, folks.
UpMo, Md.: Congratulations on the new job(s)! Will you be doing gossip wherever you find it, or just sticking with D.C.? If you're roaming, might I recommend Annapolis, where the hair flies regularly, and Upper Marlboro, where back stabbing is a fine art. We'll feed you what we can find.
Second, will you take nicknames in the grandstyle of Quidnunc? Has anyone offered you one yet? Such as, the G (as in Gossip) Diva Squared to be spelled G Diva2.
Amy Argetsinger: Thank you very much, and thanks for asking that particular question. The Reliable Source is devoted to covering the entire Bold Faced community of the larger Washington area. And we are deeply interested/intrigued in the back-stabbing, hair-pulling ways (your words!) of our local leaders. I lived in Annapolis and covered that area for the second half of the '90s, so I know and love it well.
Roxanne Roberts: Here's the deal: We want more local gossip about more local people. Think a Washington Post version US Weekly, which loves to spot celebs at the dry cleaners. We want it all, kids. John Roberts at the soccer match. Tom Delay buying videos.
Just Curious: I am behind the times ...
Lloyd's leaving The Reliable Source was quite monumentous ... but Leiby's was ... on the whimper-scale? Whatever happened to Richard Leiby?
Also, is his feud with Gene Weingarten for real, or a front to "boost the ratings", so to speak?
Roxanne Roberts: He's a discreet one, that Leiby, slipping out with the fabulous Post farewell cake. Actually, Rich is sitting mere feet from us, churning out his first love: long-form investigative articles. Weingarten comes over daily to shoot spitballs, but no bloodshed as of noon today.
Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C.: Will quoting obscure '80s band ensure getting your question printed, like it did with Leiby? How's Quidnunc doing, anyway?
Roxanne Roberts: I am hopeless, lame, clueless---pick your insult---when it comes to band names other than the Beatles. Blame it on my parents. I thought Quidnunc was New Zealand beer.
Amy Argetsinger: That should totally work for me, though. Hit me with your best shot! (not obscure, I know, but very '80s and very apropos...)
Washington, D.C.: I've always loved Lynda Carter and take pleasure that she's a local resident.
In this past year, she has appeared in two movies and will be on TV. Does this signify a major shift in her life? Will she be leaving us for Hollywood? Is she trying to land the role of an elder Amazon in the new Wonder Woman movie?
This inquiring mind would like to know.
Amy Argetsinger: Your interest in more Lynda Carter news is duly noted! Can't provide those answers quite yet, but we will do our best to OWN the Lynda Carter beat.
Twin Question: Dying to know if Jenna is still dating Henry Hager, son of Virginia Lt. Gov. John H. Hager. Is Babs seeing any one??
Amy Argetsinger: We promise an answer on this very soon. In fact, we already have high-ranking editors demanding we get you something on this soon. We promise to OWN the Jenna Bush beat, just as we will own the Lynda Carter beat.
Arlington, Va.: It's great to have the Reliable Source up and snooping again. I wish you both a long and fruitful tenure. Which brings me to my question ... there seems to be something about the Washington gossip scene that chews up columnists (and then spits them out, to other publications). Why is this? Does the nastiness of political boldfaces caught being less-than-on-message wear thin after a while? Is this unique to Washington?
Amy Argetsinger: Good question. The simple answer is that this is a very hard job -- the past couple days have been the absolute busiest of my life. You have to constantly juggle several dozen completely unrelated items at once, make numerous phone calls just to report out an item of a mere sentence, while fielding a million phone calls and e-mails from people pitching great stories and lame ones. The Post, meanwhile, has traditionally chosen to give guardianship of this fine column to regular journalists like ourselves -- people who, for the most part, had not spent their lives in the gossip industry. There's a very reasonable expectation that most normal and sane reporters will not want to do this job forever, and that's perfectly all right with everyone here. With the exception of Mr. Grove, who continued his gossip column elsewhere, all other former Reliable Sources have been happy to return to more traditional reporting jobs here at the Post once they've gotten the gossip thing out of their systems.
Roxanne Roberts: Cleverly, we have added a masseuse to the RS team, who rubs our backs and brings us green tea whenever we break a nail. We expect to last AT LEAST a month.
Arlington, Va.: There is a rumor that a high official at the White House has returned to heavy drinking. It must be true because it was a story in the National Enquirer. If you had the requisite two sources, would you go public with this or a similar story?
Amy Argetsinger: If we had this solidly reported and solidly sourced, absolutely. Though something tells me our colleagues on the White House beat -- you know, the normal reporters? -- might rightfully lay claim to that story over us...
Ale: We all snickered when we read about Senator Affleck -- until we got that pit in our stomach. I.e. - the realization that as Dems living in Virginia, we would have to vote for him.
And Roxanne -- love you on Wait, Wait, Don't tell Me!
Roxanne Roberts: Now, now---think how much fun the Benator would be. More fun than the Ar-nuld. Cuter, too. I think you're forgetting the entertainment value of political theater.
And mega thanks re WWDTM. Best damn funny weekly news roundup on public radio.
Wilmington, Del.: Hey Amy and Roxanne, I'm really interested in seeing how the two- person Reliable Source column is going to work. Do you plan on writing stories together or splitting them separately? Amy, can we expect more tidbits from celebs personal movie collections?
Amy Argetsinger: Hello Wilmington! Thanks for the question. How will this work? That's exactly what we asked ourselves a few weeks ago! So far, what seems to work for us is to report and write items separately -- *but* in constant communication with each other, contributing to each other's reporting, reviewing each other's prose, and never hesitating to say politely, "yeeee-ahh... doesn't really work for me." So far, it's working out swimmingly!
As for celebs personal movie collections... what are we talking about here -- cinema a la Paris Hilton? We can only hope. Alas, despite having spent the past year in L.A., I didn't always get invited to those kinds of parties...
Herndon, Va.: How are the Bush girls these days? I saw something about Jenna checking into a spa with a guy. Does the Bush machine call you back on this to give you crap? I'm sure Barbara (Sr.) is reading all the papers and trying to keep the family name in tact.
Amy Argetsinger: Oh, come on. Only the most desperate C-lister would want to call in an invasion-of-self-privacy tip about herself going in for spa treatment. Jenna is A-list in our world, baby, and I assure you the White House would never phone in that kind of news...
Rosslyn, Va.: Roxanne, will you still cover the party circuit, or will the Post find a new person for your old beat?
Amy, I am sorry, but I don't recognize your name, what is your history?
Amy Argetsinger: I've been with the Post for 10 years, most of those on Metro (you should check it out sometime -- appears daily right between the front section and Style -- it's pretty great!) covering the Annapolis area and the Naval Academy for a few years, followed by the higher-education beat. I spent the past year as the Post's Los Angeles bureau chief, covering Schwarzenegger and mudslides and wild chimp attacks, among other things.
Re: who and what floats your boat, gossip-wise: Can you try for at least one good Bush twins item a week? From the lack of coverage over the past couple of years, one would think that they actually matured once they got out of college. But considering how old their dad was when he started acting like a grown-up, that can't really be the case can it?
Roxanne Roberts: I fully expect the twins are evolving into mature young citizens who will contribute much to the public good. On the off chance they're not, we'll share. We're nice that way.
Washington, D.C.: Isn't it possible that Jennifer Garner is really the one Virginia Democrats are after to run for office? She seems like the smarter of the two, and "Elektra" aside, hasn't made nearly as many bad movies as Ben that voters might hold against her.
Amy Argetsinger: She's also a stupendous kickboxer, as any loyal viewer of "Alias" would know.
Bennifersville, Va.: If Ben and Jen move to Charlottesville, should we expect the National Enquirer to open a bureau there?
Amy Argetsinger: Hello Bennifersville! Yes, let's hope that they do. That would be amazing. I love Charlottesville -- wonder if the Post would let me start stringing for the Enquirer...
Washington, D.C.: Is Tom DeLay going to resign today?
Roxanne Roberts: If he does, that scamp hasn't told us. I'll check my messages.
Fairfax, Va.: LOVED the Benator column. Very funny. Did you hear they're having a baby girl? How true is that rumor they are moving to Charlottesville?
Amy Argetsinger: sounding more and more true by the day. We'll let you know what we know when we know it...
Washington, D.C.: So what's the dish on Lloyd Grove leaving NY for the West Coast? Is he getting pushed out or leaving on his own?
Amy Argetsinger: Is he leaving for the West Coast? I don't know, woke up kind of late this morning... There's talk that he's in the midst of renegotiating his contract with the NY Daily News, and unrelated buzz from pundits who have made the case that Lloyd should head West and jump-start gossip coverage at the Los Angeles Times, which surprisingly has no gossip column per se. But that's just chatter -- don't know that Lloyd or the Times have been looped into any of it...
Los Angeles, Calif.: I think we all would like more insight on "brown the clown"! from FEMA. Why is it that he now has the answers? To what went wrong? If he knew his job, he would have known the answers before this? Why is it, that his unacceptable treacherous actions are everybody else fault?
Amy Argetsinger: Probably a question for our marvelous new homeland security reporter Spencer Hsu -- let's get Spence a live chat of his own!
Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C.: Amy and Roxanne -- Welcome! But I have to admit, I really missed having a Post gossip chat last month when WRC- TV's Wendy Rieger was going through the most ghastly series of hair colors and styles seen on a TV anchor in many a year. At one point she had a truly awful short, dark brown style that added ten years to her appearance, which got changed about two days later. Thank God we once again have an outlet for opining on such important matters! (And what's up with Barbara Harrison's hair these days?)
Roxanne Roberts: Now we're getting somewhere: TV Hair. There's something in the collective DNA that needs to know why Wendy isn't blonde today. We have a separate team devoted solely to hair alerts and blonde jokes.
Washington, D.C.: Maybe the Virginia Dems should get Carl Weathers to move to the state? As he pointed out recently on SNL -- he's the only major cast member of Predator who hasn't won a major governor's race.
Amy Argetsinger: Ha! Like that idea...
Washington, D.C.: You posted Dana Rohrabacher screenplay found in the John Roberts papers at the Reagan library. It's not too difficult to find the (Michael Jackson-obsessed) Roberts' editing: In the screenplay, a "kindly old" man "complains, softly, that VOA has been playing too much Michael Jackson music lately. He says he has doubts about the musical taste of America's young people."
And there's one other reference to the King of Pop ...
Amy Argetsinger: Yes, it's great, isn't it? Clearly the 30-something staffers in the Reagan White House were troubled and transfixed by the rise of Michael Jackson -- it's a recurring theme in the Roberts papers...
Washington, D.C.: You sort of brushed off the is-Bush-drinking question, saying the White House correspondents would be more likely to break that sort of story. But that's exactly wrong. They're way too embarrassed to even ask anyone about it! It's up to butt-kicking gossip columnists to unearth the dirty little secrets of the White House that the normal press corps is complicit in keeping. Are you up for the challenge?
Amy Argetsinger: are you up for the challenge? Yes sir!!!
I said, are you up for the challenge??!?!? YES SIR!!!!
Thanks for the kick in the butt. We needed that. Feeling very energized. Just what I needed before I duck out to stalk Angelina for the day...
Potomac, Md.: Any chance that your column will be less mean-spirited than what we've seen recently, and more like tone of Chuck Conconi?
Roxanne Roberts: We are fair and wise goddesses of gossip hoping to follow in the grand tradition of all the best who came before us. We'll dole out tidbits and call them as we see them. If you behave like mature, productive grown-ups, we'll take note. If you yell at waiters and pull rank, we'll report it. If you dance naked in public, we'll mention your tan lines.
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.: Hi Amy and Roxanne. Welcome aboard!
I like the fact that you're willing to accost Bush kin, but who cares what they think about football?!
Amy Argetsinger: Heck, I think we just like having an excuse to accost people. You gotta ask them something!
Washington, D.C.: Great job with the new addition, you two! Any more juice on George Clooney's appearance here this week?
Amy Argetsinger: We tried, but couldn't find much. Can you help us?
Arlington, Va.: Was the Ben Affleck-for-VA-Senator tibit for real? It seemed like it was AN IDEA expressed by "unknown" people that got stretched into an excuse to put Affleck's handsome face on the web page for a few hours.
Amy Argetsinger: Hey, they are REALLY talking about it. Note that the story did not say that they've actually ASKED Ben Affleck to run, let alone that he will run. Don't you think it's interesting they're talking about it? Doesn't have to actually, you know, happen, does it?
Washington : Amy, I met you once and you seemed very cold. The last guy apparently hated parties. Aren't those both impediments to this particular job?
Amy Argetsinger: Oooh, ouch! Hey, what happened to all those friends of mine who were going to flood the chatroom today? I love parties. Do I gotta be nice too?
Washington, D.C:. Writing about every time Angelina Jolie comes to town is not gossip. Ripping the veil off the self-satisfied political/media elite, that's good gossip. Would you agree?
Amy Argetsinger: Sorry, no time to answer -- gotta run off to see Angelina. Roxanne will take it from here! Talk to you next week...
Yay!: So happy you two are will be this city's gossip mavens.
One request: even though gossip is all about name dropping, could the references to Cafe Milano be limited? Even though it's the white hot nuclear center of gossip in D.C? Sometimes it seems that the Post is on the CM payroll ...
Roxanne Roberts: Every era has a hot spot. For years, it was the Jockey Club, now it's Cafe Milano. We focus on people, not places---and we'll give you sightings from everywhere as merited. But we're not going to skip a Brad-Angelina-canoodling-in the-corner item just because it happens at Milano. Trust us on that.
20009: Has Eva Longoria been back in town? Huh-huh? Has she?
Roxanne Roberts: Do I detect a panting sound? Down! Sit! Stay!
Washington, D.C.: I just wanted to get a feel for how old you two are. Thirties? It seems that you have a lot of experience at the Post already, but your writing reads sort of youthful.
Roxanne Roberts: I'm ancient, Amy is a mere slip of a girl. Collectively we're 87 going on 25, but wise beyond our years.
Silver Spring, Md.: Hi there! I really hate to ask a serious question here but what new things do you both think you can bring to the R.S. by virtue of your gender that your last two predecessors couldn't? (being male) I would think that the power hungry men of D.C. would be just delighted to share a tidbit or two with you as compared to Lloyd or Quid.
Amy Argetsinger: Not me -- I'm an infamously cold person at parties! (see above) How about you, Rox?
Roxanne Roberts: I think it's less about gender and more about dishing. But if a power player decides to share based solely on my XX factor, I'm happy to listen.
Breaking News: FYI- WTOP is reporting that the Wizards Andray Blatche was shot during an attempted carjacking. Surprisingly, he was the victim.
Wizards' Blatche Released from Hospital (WTOP Radio)
DeLay indicted.: DeLay just indicted. He may have to step down as House Majority Leader.
Roxanne Roberts: The Hammer has shown a remarkable ability to prevail against all conventional wisdom. Stay tuned. This transcends the gossip pages, big time.
Virginia: Can you two ladies post pictures of you in your party dress?
Roxanne Roberts: One dress for both?
Vienna, Va.: I read recently in the Post that Dave Marash of Nightline, who used to be a local news anchor, has been "disinvited" to work for the all-new definitely-more-shallow Nightline. He is so warm and witty and talented and brilliant, he's definitely an "A" list celebrity as far as many Washingtonians are concerned, so I'd like you to follow up about where Dave is headed.
Roxanne Roberts: Noted, Mrs. Marash. You're a good mom to write.
Can you please track the dancing antics of little Jack Roberts? I love that the Bush administration along with the Roberts family are supremely embarrassed by this adorable kid!
Roxanne Roberts: I can hardly wait for Parent's Night at his school.
Vienna, Va.: For a while this column in the Post featured celebrity tipping, and I particularly enjoyed reading this. Please bring back this element! I love finding out who stiffs the waitress, who leaves a hundred dollar bill, who is gracious and who is ungracious. Let these celebrities know that we are watching them and judging them by their behavior! (Defining "celebrity" as "someone I have heard of," so it could include film stars and politicians and athletes and authors, etc., etc.)
Roxanne Roberts: We'll try to stay on top of all the big bucks doing of the Rich and Beautiful. Promi$e.
Potomac, Md.: What people want to know is not so much the blue-blood "celebrity" stuff about receptions and cocktail balls and petty chats and fundraisers, blah, but the really insightful, interesting, oddball, quirky, funny stories out there -- The New York Times reporter who allegedly trashed her rented condo; the low-level girl on Capitol Hill who writes a dumb blog about sleeping around the Hill; the local person who gets a bit speaking part in a movie; someone who pens a screenplay; someone who writes a book; those types of things. The reality on the blue-blood circuit of parties, receptions and balls -- no offense to the great work done by Roxanne through the years -- is that a very, very, very small percentage of people in the Washington metropolitan area ever get in the door to any of these things, and therefore they really are of no real consequence to most of us. But the quirky stories, and even the stories about celebrities with at least a solid news peg to them(Ben Affleck running for Senator, Trump having a baby, someone getting divorced, etc.) those are the ones that register.
Amy Argetsinger: And I think that's what you'll find in the column. We want this to be a column that's interesting to our entire readership, not just insiders.
Roxanne Roberts: So, the hour is already up and there are too many unanswered questions. Look, guys, I'll learn to type faster, okay? Keep the comments and questions coming and we'll try to answer more. We'll be here every Wednesday at noon, and you can always e-mail. This column is for you.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Post Reliable Source columnists Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts take your tips and dish about what's really going on in Washington.
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Oil refiners, bond issuers, air carriers, manufacturers, insurancers and farmers are among the interests clamoring for Congress to include their wish lists in Katrina-related legislation. Washington Post staff writer Jeffrey H. Birnbaum was online to discuss today's story on the ways lobbyists are angling for a slice of the hurricane pie.
Birnbaum writes K Street Confidential , a column about lobbying, every Monday.
Laurel, Md.: New Orleans, of course, is (was) a much-visited tourist city. Are there any indications that it's doing better on the lobbying front than other places where few people except the residents have every been?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: It's fair to say that because New Orleans is a city, it will get more attention. That's sad but true. But more than that, because so much federal money is involved, lobbying will be very intense. Lobbyists go where the money is. That's their job.
Charleston, South Carolina: I consider all lobbyists to be predatory capitalists and interested in stealing from the taxpayers' coffers.
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: It's too easy to dismiss lobbyists as bad guys (and gals). They are very important to the governmental process. We must watch what they do to know what our lawmakers and laws will do to and for us. That's why I spend so much effort keeping tabs. We all should, I think.
Ewa Beach, Hawaii : Rep. Peter King recently said that all recovery funds would be closely monitored by an inspector general, which would assure proper contracting and payments. Is this a specially appointed IG, or will it be simply another mission for the Homeland Security IG? Why should we believe that the "special" IG will do any better than the current IG has done in the recent abuses (e.g., no-bid contracts, over-pricing by Carnival)? What we need is an independent organization led by a person of integrity, such as Gen. Powell.
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: We need SOMEBODY, or many somebody's, to keep close track. That's very important. Whether there's a Czar or a team, that much money needs to be watched, especially when budget deficits are weighing down on all of us. Yes?
Bethesda, MD: I've been very critical of the Post for its complicity with the Administration on its recent Iraq lies, so it's only fair to thank you for your stellar coverage of the hurricane profiteering the past couple of days.
It's heartwarming to see that, on top of the record profits and billions in new subsidies the oil industry has enjoyed lately, that they will also be capitalizing on the misery of those on the Gulf Coast. I'm going to make a conscious effort to bike and take the bus to work from now on...
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I'm not sure I agree with you, but passion in politics is a wonderful thing. It's important that people like you watch and stay vigilant. One good way is to read the Post and it's often critical coverage of all sorts of things the government does. Thanks for writing.
Arlington, Va.: I guess I would look to 911 for comparisons. What special interest legislation would you say was passed in the name of homeland security?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: A lot of legislation is filled with narrow favors. In fact, almost every piece of legislation. Also, so much of government's work is done by outside contractors that private interests are always benefiting. Homeland security is also income security for thousands of lobbyists and their clients.
Burke, Va.: How has the mindshift on K Street shifted, if any, in recent years? Would the same thing have happened had the hurricanes occurred in 1995?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: The same thing may have happened years ago. But K Street has changed tremendously. It now is much more powerful and what lobbyists want they get much more often than in the old days. Lobbyists are real players. Knowing what they know and what they want and what they are doing is essential to guessing how laws that impact us all will be changed or implemented. K Street is government street these days.
washingtonpost.com: Jeffrey, you write that a lot of lobbyists' pleas dressed in hurricane clothing are for things that Congress has rejected for years. Will the short attention span of Americans help or favor lobbyists' efforts?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: Much of what lobbyists want are perfectly okay and in fact are valuable to the lobbyists' clients. I don't mean to dismiss their requests. In fact, they are very important, as I say. But lobbyists' jobs are to find reasons to get what their clients want. And the hurricanes are the best, most compelling reasons they have going at the moment.
Arlington, Va.: What about the other side of the coin -- do you think this administration is interested in using this opportunity to relax or eliminate regulations that it has lacked the political capital to attack before?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: Yes, all sorts of regulations, environmental and many others. That's what's likely to happen to allow the construction of more oil refineries. Extra drilling will be sought in lots of places, including in the ocean deep. Regulations of various sorts, such as those that help workers' wages, have been suspended in the Gulf coast area.
Clifton, VA: My coworkers and I want to submit a proposal to get the strippers, exotic dancers and transgender entertainers back on their feet and entertaining. We will do consulting. Do you know a firm on K street that can help us? We figure this should be worth billions. These poor people need the govt's assistance too!
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I bet there are a lot of folks on K, and many other street, who would be happy to help you out. But not me, thanks.
Northern Va.: Just how much lobbying can lawmakers accommodate? When everybody starts a big push at the same time, does it create a traffic jam in the halls of the Capitol? Do lawmakers tend to fit a few minutes in only for the lobbyists they know? Or is there always enough room on the schedule for petitioners?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: Lobbying goes on all the time and most of it isn't person to person. Letters, e-mails, questions from interested parties at townhall meetings, advertising, faxes, these are all lobbying too. So no, there's still room for people other than lobbyists on Capitol Hill. Thank heavens!
Portland, Ore.: I think the House Speaker tried to raise this, but it has since died out.
Sitting here in Portland, Oregon I'd like them to rebuild on higher ground and prevent the need for any future flood assistance.
Is there anything in all of this spending-for-all that will try to encourage any flood prevention? Such as relocation from most vulnerable areas?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: The Louisiana delegation and others have requested many billions of dollars and will probably get a lot of it. I think much of the money will go to strengthening the levees rather than raising the whole of New Orleans and that probably makes sense for the city and for the treasury too.
washingtonpost.com: DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe
washingtonpost.com: Jeffrey, a Texas grand jury just charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme. What's your initial reaction?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: This is a blow to the Republican party and to the House. Tom DeLay has been a major force for the GOP. His fundraising will be hurt, which is a terrible problem for Republican candidates. He's been a major leader and mentor to Republicans. His ideology has also been a bellwether. His disappearance from the leadership will be the start of a grand transition that could pull the party in a more moderate direction. The GOP nationally will have to do a lot of fancy footwork to prevent the Democrats from tainting all GOP candidates with the word "corruption." In short, this is a very big deal.
Burke, VA: What effect will having Rove be the head the rebuilding process mean to lobbyist - will he be able to give the "right" company the bucks?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I don't think Karl Rove has much decision power over where legislative favors go. That belongs to the powerful members of Congress and there are lots of those. Enough to keep K Street humming all the time.
Washington, D.C.: Steven Pearlstein wrote today that the federal government shouldn't cover the losses of sophisticated lenders who took their chances, placed their bets and made tons of money before the dice finally came up snake eyes. Are you seeing examples of that in your reporting?
washingtonpost.com: Don't Let Industry Win With Disaster Bailouts
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: A lot of the lobbying on the hurricanes involve bailout of various sorts, such as the airlines seeking pension protections. It's almost hard to find an example among insurers or any other industry that isn't looking for something that can be described that way, at least by critics.
Enjoy your column: Do you think that Congress will see the irony in eliminating or underfunding some of the social programs that these people relied on to meet basic needs, i.e. medicare, CHiP, Head Start, school breakfast/lunch.
The biggest joke of all was when there was a push to increase the section 8 program of subsidized housing -- There are years-long waiting lists for that!!
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I think that cutting programs in general will not be looked on as favorably, espcially in the areas you mention. The deficit will balloon as a result, but Congress doesn't appear to be much in the mood for paring their wishes. Only expanding them.
Arlington, TX: If flood insurance is paid to those who never paid a premium for the benefit of the mortgage industry, will Ted Turner, in the process of colorizing classic B&W movies, also have to change Wells Fargo's image as guardian of the strong box to the culprit opening the lock box?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I can tell that you see the point. Cheers!
Pennsylvania: Now that DeLay has been charged, can Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post back off the Abramoff story now?
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: Sue Schmidt is one of the Post's very best writers and reporters. And the Abramoff story, which I've written about as well, is very far from over. Stay tuned.
Alexandria, Va.: Good Afternoon, Mr. Birnbaum
With all due respect, the process of "lobbying" is, for the most part, purchasing legislation. An objective observer would have no trouble defining this activity as bribery, yet you seem to think that there is no connection between the money flowing to members of Congress and the laws passed. Can you explain why you believe this?
Many thanks, Eyes wide open in Alexandria
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: I believe that there is a very strong connection between money and politics and legislation. I don't think that campaign contributions alone are responsible for legislative outcomes. They are an important element, however. I study all the elements, as should you.
Jeffrey H. Birnbaum: Thank you for the wonderful questions. Please come back the next time I'm on. All best!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Oil refiners, bond issuers, air carriers, manufacturers, insurancers and farmers are among the interests clamoring for Congress to include their wish lists in Katrina-related legislation. Washington Post staff writer Jeffrey H. Birnbaum was online to discuss ways lobbyists are angling for a slice of the hurricane pie.
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FEMA Under Scrutiny in Hearings
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Paul C. Light , professor of Public Service at New York University, was online Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss FEMA and former director Michael Brown 's testimony on the embattled agency's response to Hurricane Katrina.
College Park, Md.: Michael Brown is still on the federal government payroll as a consultant. What exactly does he do as such?
Paul C. Light: Let's start here with a big "I haven't a clue." The fact that Mike Brown is still hanging around suggests some indecisiveness, obviously, in making the transition. First he was sent home to oversee other catastrophes, then told to focus on lessons learned. I doubt that his testimony yesterday had been precleared with the White House, but who knows. Whether you like him or not, he needs to be sent home now.
San Luis Obispo, Calif.: Prof. Light:
Could you please clarify just what FEMA's responsibility is once the President has declared a disaster? I was under the impression that once the governor of Louisiana had asked Bush to declare a disaster and Bush had, the federal government assumed major responsibility for handling disaster preparation and relief. Yet, yesterday Brown said that FEMA's role was merely to provide help to the state efforts and FEMA didn't have the resources to do more. Your take? Thanks for doing this chat.
Paul C. Light: FEMA needs to do more than "coordinate." It also needs to respond. It is not a first-responder per se--that task goes to state and local police, fire, charitable organizations, emergency personnel. But it also needs to be able to move supplies quickly into play and elevate decisions to the right level of government. This is particularly important given the reality that significant catastrophes can incapacitate local and state governments. FEMA is very much a fail-safe when local and state governments cannot act. FEMA has extraordinary authorities dating back to the Cold War to engage the entire federal establishment, including the military, in quick response. The question is when to hit the "button" to use those authorities and bring the president and senior leadership of government to the table. I think FEMA waited too long.
Los Angeles, Calif.: As bad as it sounds, I kind of believe Mr. Brown that it wasn't -all- his fault. The head of FEMA does not have the authority to call up the military or national guard, does he?
Chertoff and Bush are probably more responsible then he is no?
Paul C. Light: As you've heard a thousand times, there's plenty of blame to go around. FEMA has significant authority to raise the alarm. Much as I believe Rep. Tom Davis and the Republican members of his House Government Reform Committee are committed to a fair and unbiased investigation of what went wrong, I suspect that we're going to need some time and distance and independence to reassure Americans that they can trust government at all levels in the next catastrophe. I thought yesterday's hearing was very tough, and the Republicans acquitted themselves well, but there's a great deal of uncertainty among the American public already about what to do in the event of an emergency. Our task ahead is to rebuild FEMA by giving it the resources and leadership to succeed, while also maintaining and/restoring public confidence in their local, state, and federal agencies. There are a lot of unprepared Americans out there who depend on their governments to tell them what to do when catastrophe strikes. Obviously, the citizens of Houston listened to their mayor and governor when the call to evacuate came. But I suspect that many Americans are more confused than ever about how to react.
Washington, D.C.: Dear Professor Light, Does anyone think Mr. Brown is doing well in the hearings? He is coming across as defensive and ill-informed. Has he not been counseled about his appearance? Thanks.
Paul C. Light: I rather suspect he's freelancing. I can't imagine the White House had any inkling of what he would say yesterday.
Pa.: My friend had never heard of FEMA until two days ago. Please help me explain to her that she has been living under a rock for the past month.
Paul C. Light: Don't be too tough on her. There are hundreds and hundreds of agencies involve in disaster preparedness and response in this country. You almost need a Ph.D. in acronyms to keep up.
One of the fallacies Michael Brown continued to spew yesterday was that the only jurisdiction that had problems was Louisiana, the only one with Democratic leadership. I remember seeing Joe Scarborough (hardly an impartial judge) ranting from Mississippi after Katrina that nothing was going well there, either. Don't we also have evidence that Florida had its problems with FEMA in the past two years?
Paul C. Light: I think FEMA was weakening well before Katrina hit, and don't believe the Homeland Security merger is the cause of all that ails the agency. I've looked at employee surveys from early 2002 and can tell you that FEMA was already suffering by then--many employees said they didn't have the resources to do their jobs; many also said they had very little respect for their new leaders. Luckily, I believe FEMA is a resilient agency. I think it can come back with strong leadership, but will also need some reorganization to restore its edge in disaster response and recovery. Toward that end, I'm very supportive of the proposals that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff sent to Congress last summer to create a new department-wide directorate for preparedness. FEMA would lose its preparedness responsibilities under the proposal, which would free it up to focus more closely on response and recovery, which are arguably its two most important functions. I'd like to see Congress give him the authority to implement his summer recommendations now, even if there is deeper reorganization coming in another six months or so. Chertoff is just about the only one in town who can say "I told you so" right now--he was clearly on target regarding needed changes well before Katrina, as was his senior team.
One final point. Many of the senior people at Homeland Security are first rate, including the deputy secretary, Michael Jackson, and the new head of the Transportation Security Administration, "Kip" Hawley. Now the question is how to make sure the new head of FEMA is up to the job, as Paulison appears to be as acting head, and find new people to run both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Julie Meyers will not survive the Senate confirmation process) and Customs and Border Patrol, where the top jobs is now vacant.
Sorry for going on so long.
Long Beach, Calif.: Didn't the Louisiana Governor send letters/messages to the President requesting "troops" on Sunday and Monday before Katrina struck?
Paul C. Light: Yes. Problem was that she didn't ask the right way perhaps. She basically said "Send me all the help you can." Somebody simply didn't listen. Right now, we've got tons of plans in Washington--the National Response Plan, the National Incident Management System, etc., etc., etc. Each one comes with page-upon-page of definitions for the dozens of acronyms.
Problem is that most policy-makers don't have time to read the plans and their emergency coordinators can't translate fast enough. The plans are essential, but there has to be some effort to translate them into simple, usable language that everyone can use.
Laurel, Md.: My father works for FEMA and has been working 12-hour shifts since before Katrina even hit Florida. While Brown may have been creative with his resume, truth is most of the political appointees have little or no experience with whichever agency they are appointed to. In many video-conferences while Katrina was heading towards Louisiana, state officials kept insisting they were fine and that there wouldn't be any problems. I hope that Mr. Brown will release his copies of these meetings so that we can really figure out who dropped the ball.
Paul C. Light: Again, I think there are plenty of problems to deal with at all levels.
We're about to release a public opinion survey here at NYU of public preparedness for emergencies. The news is not good. The survey was completed before Katrina, but clearly suggests that most Americans are (1) not prepared for emergencies, (2) do not know what to expect in the many scenarios of catastrophe that are now in play with natural and human-made uncertainty, and (3) will go everywhere but loose in the event of a real crisis such as a suicide bombing or release of a deadly disease. They are HIGHLY dependent on their local governments and institutions to tell them what to do, but those governments and institutions appear to be, and I emphasize appear, not well prepared themselves to communicate. We've got a lot of work to do, but we obviously have the president's attention, and Congress is gearing up. And there are success stories in all this. The Coast Guard was absolutely terrific, and I'm very impressed with the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. There are going to be mistakes and patchiness in delivery, but the charities are doing well, I think.
Detroit, Mich.: Professor Light: What about the regional directors? These people are left over from the last campaign. Michigan's regional director appears to be qualified, but other regions don't appear to be well served. What are the odds that these folks may be moved out? If not what are the implications? Thank you.
Paul C. Light: Good question, serious problem. One of the back stories is that there were a very large number of vacancies and acting appointees at the lower levels of FEMA when FEMA struck. The heads of the operations, recovery, and mitigation bureaus were all acting appointees, including one who was still running Region V in Chicago, and four of the ten regional offices were vacant. You could ease the problem here by reducing the number of political posts in FEMA, indeed across the government as whole so the White House and Senate can concentrate their focus on the very most important jobs, while leaving the rest to career officers.
Alexandria, Va.: I understand Brown made somewhat of an attempt to pass the buck to Louisiana officials by making the comment that FEMA's procedures worked well in Mississippi and Alabama and only broke down in Louisiana. Well, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? The kind of overwhelming devastation that occurred (and occurred exactly as predicted) in New Orleans is exactly the situation where local officials are going to be overwhelmed and desperately need federal help. A hurricane in New Orleans, and earthquake in LA or SF, these situations, more than any other, are exactly what we need FEMA and Homeland Security for. Not to minimize what Katrina did to Mississippi or what Rita did to Texas, or to suggest that those governments didn't need federal assistance, but they could have gotten by on their own if necessary. New Orleans didn't stand a chance.
Paul C. Light: Again, time for him to go home.
Twin Cities, Minn.: When I was working on my Master's of Public Administration, I worked on an internship with the state branch of homeland security and streamlining emergency operation plans into the new National Incident Management system. Our team was a bit aghast, and I'd assume even more so now, that the state didn't stockpile emergency necessities because of the cost of storage and rot. The numbers for vendors were eluded to as the phonebook. I'm scared most states have frittered away homeland security money on balancing state budget shortfalls and other things that have left us no more prepared than pre-911.
Paul C. Light: I think there has been a lot of waste in the homeland security grants program, in part because of pork-barrel earmarks by Congress, and in part because the formula for distribution was not based on risk. I can't tell you how many calls I've gotten from reporters asking who decides how the dollars get spent. The answer is what economists call a substitution effect. Many local and state governments have used the dollars to pay for things they were going to buy anyway--e.g., new fire trucks--or for things they didn't need--e.g., one county bought a mobile crime lab they are using to crack down on meth labs.
D.C.: It is extremely jarring to hear that, in a catastrophe, my life could very well depend on Anthony Williams' ability to coordinate rescue teams and equipment delivery. I think Mr. Williams is a competent man, but a major catastrophe is a special circumstance that should be handled by specialists, isn't it? That's what FEMA's for, isn't it?
All I know is that last month, none of my friends had a disaster plan or kit in their homes, and now all of them do. September 11 didn't scare us, but Katrina sure enough did because it is now obvious that in the remote event of a major disaster, we will be utterly and completely left to our own devices.
Paul C. Light: You do need to think ahead about how you can last for two or three days on your own--bottled water, food, a plan for connecting with family when the cellular system goes down. Unfortunately, our recent survey suggests that a substantial minority of Americans simply do not have the time, resources, or sense of urgency to act. It's not that they think disasters are unlikely--many Americans expect suicide bombings and biological/chemical attacks in the coming years. Rather, it's that most believe it won't happen in their home town--they believe their communities are too small, too trivial, or somehow too lucky to be a target.
We've got to work this harder.
Washington, D.C.: I submit that critics generally believe that, should FEMA and other agencies/government bodies have done something different, everything would have gone perfectly and that no living thing would have been harmed. Balderdash! Where is the objective, empirical evidence to inform our national discourse that suggests alternative outcomes based upon different actions? History is replete of examples highlighting the limitations of mankind and government. Proceeding with great haste may have helped, but no one knows to what degree. No matter how prepared, things would have gone wrong. "No plan survives first contact with the enemy."
Paul C. Light: Agreed. We have all learned important lessons here, including ways to strengthen our models of how evacuations occur, etc., etc. Texas will have gasoline tankers prepositioned during the next evacuation, for example. And there's no doubt that people would have been hurt no matter how fast FEMA moved--some citizens are bound and determined to tempt fate. But I think we have to acknowledge that something went desperately wrong in New Orleans--we didn't do all we could have.
Washington, D.C.: While there may be plenty of blame to go around, could you identify just one or two things that local and state officials should have "done better" to prepare for and respond to Katrina?
Paul C. Light: The New Orleans evacuation plan was not well executed, for example. Buses not used, Amtrak trains not filled, etc. Many first responders left with their families and never came back, for another example. That could have been addressed by having a designated redeployment destination for quick reentry to the city. But this all has to be reviewed with a bit of distance.
New Roads, La.: Will this congressional public hearing process, which is open to charges of partisanship, be the only formal source of information for congress in writing legislation to try to make future responses more effective?
Paul C. Light: I think Congress and the president will eventually reach some kind of agreement for a fair and open assessment. My main concern is that Americans be reassured that they can trust their governments when they are told what to do. I don't think that trust is easily to build and hold if our national, state, or local institutions seem closed to full and transparent reviews. As I said much earlier in this chat, I think Homeland Security should move quickly forward with the secretary's proposed reorganization, Congress should let its committees start examining legislative options for improving preparedness, and some independent commission (perhaps even the 9/11 commission) should quickly review the organizational and management issues embedded in this event. We haven't much time to act.
Fredericksburg, Va.: As someone who had "boots on the ground" in New Orleans as part of a FEMA Urban Search & Rescue Task Force, I can say that the State and Local government command and control there were nothing short of pathetic -- bordering closely on the reprehensible. City and State leaders refused to communicate with each other and the Federal government elements; essential personnel were AWOL; decision making was non-existent. This is not about blame. This is about accountability. The Federal DHS and FEMA response had to engage not only a major natural catastrophe but overcome the immense deficit left by the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana.
Paul C. Light: Very useful comment from the ground. The question is what to do when governments fail, which is bound to happen in major catastrophes. Do we federalize? Do we activate the military? We need to talk frankly about when and where the federal government should have the authority to place a city and/or state emergency system into the equivalent of "receivership." What are the steps? How fast should we act? It's an important policy debate that we need to engage as part of the post-Katrina investigations.
Sims, N.C.: Will the democratic mayor and governor continue to be scapegoated? What about Hayley's sweetheart clean up deal in Miss.? Once again the media seems to be the conduit for Republican smears. Everyone messed up to some extent, but the way the mayor and governor of La. are being browbeaten shows this is nothing but another political game.
Paul C. Light: This story is going to play out over a very long time, perhaps well into next year. We'll certainly get another look before the next hurricane season. The sooner we get into an independent, bipartisan investigation, the better.
Rowland Heights, Calif.: Is Michael Brown criminally liable for the death and destruction in New Orleans for being negligent to his role as head of FEMA?
Why is he receiving a stipend as Cabinet official when he has been terminated from that post?
What will happen to these house hearings that are mostly covered by Republican Congressmen? Is there any chance of getting independent prosecutors?
Does the Bush administration intend to pass the buck to Brown and sweep the other dirt under the rug, blame local officials and beep up their poll ratings?
When are we going to see the light of bipartisanship or spirit of compromise from both parties in deliberation of national interest? It appears that their interests are all self serving.
Paul C. Light: I believe that Brown is still on the payroll in some way--perhaps as a consultant to FEMA as part of his severance. But that needs to be cleared up.
There are some very talented members of Congress who are ready to work on these issues, including members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. I'd like to see the Senate, House, and White House sit down together as soon as possible to launch an effort to repair the federal, state, and local system. The best picture for restoring confidence is not another shot of President. Bush in the Gulf States, but one of him calling the congressional leadership together to iron out a plan for the future.
Ashland, Mo.: As a citizen, isn't it foolish to assume the federal government or any other government is going to bail you out of a disaster? Aren't you better off assuming there will be no help? Is there any record of consistent government competence at handling disasters without sustained personal assistance by citizens who are not government employees?
Paul C. Light: I strongly urge you to be ready to spend the first days after a disaster on your own. Go to http://www.ready.gov/ and look at what you'll need. Prepare your family for the breakdown in communications, etc.
Chesapeake Beach, Md.: FEMA Director Brown pointed out a few times when I was watching that FEMA is not a first responder. They don't show up on day one with a change of clothes and a bottle of water. People are on their own for the first 72 hours.
Do you feel the fact that this hurricane hit an area where people were unable (unwilling, or unprepared) to go 72 hours on their own interfered with or hampered FEMA's efforts to respond? Was FEMA stuck doing things in the first few days they don't normally have to deal with in an area where people are prepared to go 72 hours without assistance (like hundreds of helicopters and boats rescuing people and evacuating busloads of residents)?
Paul C. Light: There is a very serious "preparedness divide" in this country between rich and poor, educated and less-educated. My survey work suggests that the divide is based on class, not race. When asked what they would do in the event of a catastrophe such as a terrorist bombing or release of deadly virus in their own community, roughly a fifth of Americans simply answer that they simply don't know. We'll be releasing this survey in the coming weeks. Important to realize that not everyone can be prepared, and that government and charitable organizations and businesses all have a role in helping close the divide.
Kiawah Island, S.C.: Dr. Light,
As someone that lives in an area that could potentially be hit and devastated by a hurricane, I am well aware of the potential devastation and aftereffects of direct hit by a storm. Until Katrina, I thought a mandatory evacuation meant that people had to leave. In any case, the authorities here(local ones) tell everyone emphatically that if you stay you are on your own. Why is it that the people who decided to stay should not take the same amount of responsibility regarding their situation as the authorities that failed them. I see a reluctance on the part of the government to speak on this obvious truth. Your thoughts?
Paul C. Light: It's a truth to a point. But some people couldn't leave because of the lack of transport. Government has to step in sometimes and provide the resources. I keep thinking of the picture of all those school buses in New Orleans that sat in a neat line in knee-deep water. How can we make sure they are used more effectively in the future?
That's it for me. Very good questions from you all.
Pittsburgh, Pa.: Ohmygosh - was he NUTS testifying like that? He looked and sounded extremely defensive, blaming the La. governor and N.O. mayor for the majority of the problems...
He couldn't have dug himself a deeper hole in my opinion. To get even several Republican Senators to rail against him during the hearing - One of the worst things I've seen since Mark McGuire's "I don't want to talk about the past" Senate performance.
I can't imagine there won't be some sort of fallout after this. Seems to me if he wanted to salvage his reputation, he pretty much did the opposite.
Paul C. Light: Okay, I can't resist. The answer to this question is probably "yes."
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Paul C. Light, professor of Public Service at New York University, discusses FEMA and former director Michael Brown's testimony on the embattled agency's response to Hurricane Katrina.
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Hurricane Katrina's violent winds and waters tore away the shrouds that ordinarily mask the country's racial pattern of poverty and neglect. Understandably, most commentators have focused on the woeful federal response. Others, taking a longer view, yearn for a burst of activism patterned on the New Deal. But that nostalgia requires a heavy dose of historical amnesia. It also misses the chance to come to terms with how the federal government in the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the persistence of two Americas.
It was during the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman that such great progressive policies as Social Security, protective labor laws and the GI Bill were adopted. But with them came something else that was quite destructive for the nation: what I have called "affirmative action for whites." During Jim Crow's last hurrah in the 1930s and 1940s, when southern members of Congress controlled the gateways to legislation, policy decisions dealing with welfare, work and war either excluded the vast majority of African Americans or treated them differently from others.
Between 1945 and 1955, the federal government transferred more than $100 billion to support retirement programs and fashion opportunities for job skills, education, homeownership and small-business formation. Together, these domestic programs dramatically reshaped the country's social structure by creating a modern, well-schooled, homeowning middle class. At no other time in American history had so much money and so many resources been targeted at the generation completing its education, entering the workforce and forming families.
But most blacks were left out of all this. Southern members of Congress used occupational exclusions and took advantage of American federalism to ensure that national policies would not disturb their region's racial order. Farmworkers and maids, the jobs held by most blacks in the South, were denied Social Security pensions and access to labor unions. Benefits for veterans were administered locally. The GI Bill adapted to "the southern way of life" by accommodating itself to segregation in higher education, to the job ceilings that local officials imposed on returning black soldiers and to a general unwillingness to offer loans to blacks even when such loans were insured by the federal government. Of the 3,229 GI Bill-guaranteed loans for homes, businesses and farms made in 1947 in Mississippi, for example, only two were offered to black veterans.
This is unsettling history, especially for those of us who keenly admire the New Deal and the Fair Deal. At the very moment a wide array of public policies were providing most white Americans with valuable tools to gain protection in their old age, good jobs, economic security, assets and middle-class status, black Americans were mainly left to fend for themselves. Ever since, American society has been confronted with the results of this twisted and unstated form of affirmative action.
A full generation of federal policy, lasting until the civil rights legislation and affirmative action of the 1960s, boosted whites into homes, suburbs, universities and skilled employment while denying the same or comparable benefits to black citizens. Despite the prosperity of postwar capitalism's golden age, an already immense gap between white and black Americans widened. Even today, after the great achievements of civil rights and affirmative action, wealth for the typical white family, mainly in homeownership, is 10 times the average net worth for blacks, and a majority of African American children in our cities subsist below the federal poverty line.
President Lyndon Johnson faced up to racial inequality in "To Fulfill These Rights," a far-reaching graduation speech he delivered at Howard University in June 1965. He noted that "freedom is not enough" because "you do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and they say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair." What is needed, he argued, is a set of new policies, a dramatic new type of affirmative action for "the poor, the unemployed, the uprooted, and the dispossessed." He had in mind the kind of comprehensive effort the GI Bill had provided to most returning soldiers, but without its exclusionary pattern of implementation.
This form of assertive, mass-oriented affirmative action never happened. By sustaining and advancing a growing African American middle class, the affirmative action we did get has done more to advance fair treatment across racial lines than any other recent public policy, and thus demands our respect and support. But as the scenes from New Orleans vividly displayed, so many who were left out before have been left out yet again.
Rather than yearn for New Deal policies that were tainted by racism, or even recall the civil rights and affirmative action successes of the 1960s and beyond, we would do better in present circumstances to return to the ambitious plans Johnson announced but never realized to close massive gaps between blacks and whites, and between more and less prosperous blacks.
Without an unsentimental historical understanding of the policy roots of black isolation and dispossession, and without an unremitting effort to cut the Gordian knot joining race and class, our national response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast states will remain no more than a gesture.
Ira Katznelson, a professor of political science and history at Columbia University, is the author of "When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in America."
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Southern lawmakers turned the New Deal into affirmative action for whites. Let's not repeat the mistake in responding to the Gulf Coast disaster.
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Bert Stover's National Guard Service
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I took the opportunity with some friends of mine Saturday to get a first hand look at the sights and sounds of the anti- and pro-war protests on the National Mall. I wanted to see and hear what people had to say about a war I'll experience first hand over the next 18 months.
What I heard were shouting matches between people who hated each other, what I saw were a confusing mix of protests -- many of which were piggy backed on the anti-war theme but had no relation at all to war issues.
The anti-war protesters were out in great numbers, climbing on rooftops and light poles. The pro-war protesters seemed consist of a couple hundred people on one block in front of the FBI building. My friends and I happened to arrive just as anti-war protesters marched past their opponents, so we watched for a few minutes.
We saw several exchanges of hateful messages from both sides. Police officers lined the street creating a barrier between the two groups. I decided I wanted to get some photos of the altercations so I slipped between the two groups. It was interesting to be in the middle, where people from both sides thought I was on the other side.
I wondered what an event like this must cost. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of law enforcement officers from several different elements of local and federal agencies. Mounted police, SWAT teams, FBI agents, etc., just so Americans could have a venue to express their disdain with our leaders.
By Bert Stover | September 27, 2005; 08:00 AM ET | Category: Misc. Previous: An Eventful Flight | Main Index | Next: Last Day in the Office..
"Just so Ameicans could have a venue to express their disdain with our leaders"??? So how much did it cost to have an OPTIONAL war? How much did it cost to give Halliburton and KBR no-bid contracts because, apparently, they are the only ones Dick Cheney knows who can serve food?
While you're at it, how much does it cost to have elections and due process in courts?
Bush said being a dictator would be easier. Well, it would be cheaper, too. Cheaper than allowing protests, cheaper than citizen rights such as a fair trial, cheaper than thinking.
If you're worried about costs, I suggest you look at the administration whose fiscal policy will burden not only your kids, but your grandchildren. Look at the president who alienated America's allies. Look at the president who blew it in Afghanistan, Iraq, AND New Orleans.
Posted by: Chris Estes | Sep 27, 2005 8:51:28 AM
your only question is "i wondered what an event like this must cost"???
didnt you wonder about the war itself and how it makes your citizens react.... especially those with kids in the war? did you even stop to think for a minute about the meaning and precipitants of the war?
perhaps you will when you're smack dab in the middle of it. AS someone who oppses the war, i wish you a safe and speedy return, but please be aware most of the world thinks you will be a participant in a massive crime
Posted by: david | Sep 27, 2005 9:04:36 AM
Other than the Army, for whom and to whom is Mr. Stover's 9/24 report directed?
It never struck me that a demonstration was a particularly good place to "learn" about any issue. It has always been my understanding that demonstrations, unlike debates were held for advocating or opposing a particular point of view.
Compared to what is cost important? A normal, non-demonstration late summer, or early fall day, on the mall? The cost of maintaining one batallion in the "green zone" or the forces required to run Abu Gharib for one day? the cost of the president's security detail and support services and people for 5 weeks at Crawford TX? Certainly not the right of the citizenry to peacefully petition for redress of their grievances!
Finally, who is Mr. Stover's patron that permitted him to use so much space for content of such little substance?
Posted by: jwalsip | Sep 27, 2005 9:10:45 AM
What an unreflective and unhelpful observation. As a daughter of a career military father, I had hoped for an intelligent analysis of what it means to be an active participant in a military engagement that the general populace increasingly finds morally abhorrent. I would like Mr. Stover to meet a student of mine, an Army sniper who served 13 months in Iraq before returning home to pursue his education. His view of the U.S. involvement in the war is tempered by experience and and a resolute patriotism that goes far beyond the superficial musings of Mr. Stover. Good luck Mr. Stover, you have a lot to learn, and I sincerely hope you come back healthy and whole.
Posted by: Becks | Sep 27, 2005 9:30:33 AM
I get the impression that Mr. Stover spent darn little time collecting his very “insightful” observations. I too observed, and I also took pictures. But I didn’t stop at just one spot along the route and cherry-pick an impression. I spent hours on the route and on the mall. I walked for awhile. I also sat for awhile and watched the march flow past me. I listened. I thought.
I hadn’t been to a protest march since the early 70s. A couple of weeks ago I walked in DoD’s carefully orchestrated march. There was quite a difference between the two, and looking at the crowds, I think I know which one better represented America.
I am a retired military officer who was working on homeland security years before it became the catch phrase of the decade. Perhaps that is why I’m more disappointed than many people in the lies and deceit that frame this administration’s approach to Iraq. I certainly know that relationship between Iraq and 9/11 is essentially nonexistent. And I worry that a withdrawal will plunge the region into chaos, but am equally worried that the current policies are also plunging the region into chaos.
Mr. Stover didn’t do a very good for himself on Saturday. But I suspect he’ll do a much better job over there. And I pray for his safe return so that we can pick up this conversation again.
Posted by: LJ | Sep 27, 2005 9:31:34 AM
Bert, I'm taking a different view than these posted criticisms from your countrymen. I respect your questioning the cost of the security. While the radical right and left use every opportunity to further their viewpoint - often by ridiculous use of imagery and name calling - there are many of us who just do not give a crap for their theatrics and rabid emotionalism. Our time is taken up by work, taking care of family, giving to charities, etc. to spend any time (and money, which would have made a nice contribution to the hurricane victims) to go to the national capital and participate in the ridiculous side shows (where do they get these costumes?) as I evidenced on tv. The cost are the $ the taxpayer has to pay, time the police could spend with their families, and the patience of regular citizens worn thin by the radical's sorry and pitiful venting.
Posted by: Gerry Fluharty | Sep 27, 2005 9:40:45 AM
Dear Bert: If perhaps you'd taken time to converse with a few protesters, you'd have a better idea than "a hateful message" or shouting match. Most of the people who decided to march last weekend did not believe in the war before it began, tried to get their message across by writing and calling their political representatives and the White House and NOTHING HAPPENED! All normal avenues to communicate with the present administration accomplished nothing. It was as if there's a giant glass dome over this White House and Congress preventing ordinary citizens' concerns being heard. That's the degree of frustration that culminated in this march last weekend. More than half the country now believes the war was started on false and misleading information. What other avenue could citizens use? We've been ignored for years by this White House.
Posted by: Violet | Sep 27, 2005 10:08:42 AM
Post by Gerry Fluharty ends with a comment on the "radical's sorry and pitiful venting"
The right wing is trying every trick to stop the outbreak of a peace movement. As Arianna Huffington says, it is hard to marginalize a majority.
In a year from now it will be interesting to see if Cindy Sheehan's protest did indeed lead to a large anti-war movement that will lead to election losses for Republicans in 2006 because of the war which has been such a failure.
Posted by: Don Utter | Sep 27, 2005 10:10:35 AM
"It was interesting to be in the middle, where people from both sides thought I was on the other side."
Interesting in what way, Mr. Stover? What thoughts and feelings occurred to you as you stood in the middle ground between these opposing camps? How did they relate to the fact that you're about to ship out overseas, at the risk of your own life, to perhaps take the lives of other human beings at the service of our political leaders? What exactly is the 'cause' that you're prepared to kill, and perhaps to die for? Surely you must be wondering. You're not going to be able to stay on the fence for very much longer.
Life is full of confusing and uncertain choices. We can be guided by what other people insist is right, or we can listen to our quiet inner voice.
May all beings be safe, happy, healthy, and live joyously.
Posted by: BZ | Sep 27, 2005 10:13:16 AM
I think you've expressed a legitimate view of the protests. You should remember, though, that if it weren't for our right as Americans to publicly express our "disdain with our leaders," the American soldiers in Iraq would truly be fighting for nothing at all (whatever they may be fighting for now). The cost of the security is thus definitely worth it.
Posted by: DBG | Sep 27, 2005 10:13:34 AM
It's interesting to read Mr. Stover's comments in relation to the Media Notes column. In the MNC, the point is made that crowd estimates are a function of one's political bias. Mr. Storver, who apparantly sympathizes with the pro-war demonstrators, estimated their number at about 200. Somebody needs to tell this kid to get with the program.
Posted by: Dave | Sep 27, 2005 10:17:31 AM
Stay safe and best of luck to you during your deployment. Did you sign something like this when you enlisted in the Guard?
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962)."
Amendment I of the US Constitution states - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
So maybe you should reexamine your commitments.
Posted by: joejoejoe | Sep 27, 2005 10:19:30 AM
Cindy Sheehan's pathetic need for attention and male attention cost us billions. The socialist leaders of the protest, who support dictators around the world, like to see soldiers die. They are actually glorifying the insurgents who killed Casey Sheehan. So it is my right to say those idiots in D.C. are criminal lunatics. They are not noble, they want to see the US lose, and see our soldiers die.
Posted by: Karen | Sep 27, 2005 10:37:07 AM
Without protest, there's no change. That's why you're a U.S. citizen and not British. When you come back from your tour of duty, give us a follow-up report.
Posted by: Chuck | Sep 27, 2005 10:43:33 AM
Having just returned from Iraq it was interesting to view the reactions of the soldiers in Iraq as Cindy Sheehan conducted her Texas vigil. Many of them were furious with her actions and many wrote their own families to act in no such manner should they become casualties. It's also interesting to see that these young servicemembers also understand the importance of a stable middle east. They are focused on their mission and believe they are doing something good for the nation and for their own children. We as a nation still have the problem of radical fundamental Islam no matter which side of this conflict a person supports. Some one should articulate to me how we resolve this issue - and I know first hand, that just leaving the middle east is not the answer.
Posted by: WS | Sep 27, 2005 10:53:15 AM
To the question of how much did this event cost? I can only answer ALOT less than a day of war in Iraq.
Posted by: Mark Esposito | Sep 27, 2005 10:54:39 AM
People on all sides of this issue have a right to protest, and as Americans we should support that right.
The bigger issue here is what any of this matters. Once a war is launched, there are no "do-overs". The sad fact is that Americans fell for the lies and embraced this war. Now there's no going back, no quick solutions, no easy out. For the next several decades American troops are going to be occupying Iraq, killing and dying for no clear reason. Can't leave and can't win.
The lesson here is that choices have consequences. The American people will have to accept responsibility for this like grownups, and sacrifice the blood and treasure it requires to stabilize the region.
Let's be more careful next time folks.
Posted by: an observer | Sep 27, 2005 10:58:40 AM
The cost of expressing our disdain of our leaders? The cost of not being allowed to express this "disdain" would be incalculable; it would be our Freedom! We are Americans, all of us... What does this mean? Among other precious things, it means we have the Right to protest the policies and actions taken by our elected leadership on our behalf. I mourn the death and life changing injury, both physical and psychic, of every soldier - and civilian - in Iraq. I am unable to escape the conclusion that this war was and remains the Choice of the Bush administration. I don't believe that this war has made the US or the world "safer," as Mr. Bush continually asserts, nor do I think that the terrible, tragic "cost" in lives and our national treasure is or will be "worth it," another assertion of Mr. Bush's. My heart goes out to you. I hope that your personal "cost" in obeying the orders of our incompetent and disingenuous policy in Iraq doesn't prove to be too great to bear.
Posted by: Sean Kirk | Sep 27, 2005 11:02:19 AM
Here's what we focus on as observers: The constitutional elections in Iraq are coming up in mid October. If they are successful then the new Iraq government gets seated before the year is out. Then I would be willing to bet that our military puts a full court press on and starts getting out of there in 2006. That's the strategic objective at this point as far as I can tell.
Posted by: WS | Sep 27, 2005 11:02:47 AM
Maybe a lot of you are missing the point the young officer was trying to make. He doesn't appear to be against the right to protest. He only points out that in this country, which some so vehmently condemn for reasons I swear I cannot fathom, there is an absolute right to peaceably and lawfully assemble regardless of cost. There may be room to nitpick there, but historically this country has been a beacon. The other point is that this nation is a democracy in which the majority rules (the 2000 election is over so don't bother screeching). To some extent the minority has to suck it up and wait for their turn at the next election and try to pursuade a deciding number of citizens to their point of view. Conducting lawless protest makes the statement that democracy is irrelevant and that the views of self-described elites who, of course, know better than the rest of us, trump the will of the people.
Posted by: Steve | Sep 27, 2005 11:08:07 AM
I was there with my two daughters. I saw many, many military veterans from different eras protesting against this war. The military is being misused and abused in this wrongheaded war that was sold on false premises. The chief sales force was the media, which beat the drums of war and acted as cheerleaders for the Bush administration. The media failed us by not questioning Bush's real motives, because to do so would have been seen as unpatriotic. I heard an Iraq vet tell how his vehicle lacked armor and how his unit was told to attach plywood to it and paint the plywood green so it would look like metal. Paint and plywood don't fool roadside bombs and Donald Rumsfeld doesn't really support the troops.
Posted by: realist | Sep 27, 2005 11:25:48 AM
The "cost" of protest is the price of war.
Posted by: Patrick | Sep 27, 2005 11:32:59 AM
regarding the armoring - I would offer that there is now no excuse for anyone to be in a vehicle that is not properly armored. I would also offer that in the early stages of this war we indeed did not have the armored vehicles and so people improvised. As with any conflict, we as a nation and as a fighting force, adjusted, and now have the armored vehicles desired. If anyone is riding in harms way without armor then it is a failure of military leadership.
Posted by: WS | Sep 27, 2005 11:38:02 AM
1st, we can all pray this young man returns home from Bushs' War On Iraq. Then we must ask these questions. 1. Why do Americans assume "GOD" is on our side, and only our side? 2.Why did the administration lie, and continue to lie , to us about IRAQ/9.11? 3. Have you asked your legislators why their childen are not in service to our country? 4. We were told a year ago Iraq troups were being trained to replace Americans; @ what point will they have enough, if ever? 5. Can a true Democracy be forced on a culture?
Posted by: duncan | Sep 27, 2005 11:47:18 AM
The main problem is in the american psyche that believes that everybody wants to be like us. That the only freedom is our style of freedom,and our style of society.we tend to believe that we know better,that we are better than other countries and consequently when things don't go our way we react like spoiled children.When we realize that there are more than 200 diferent countries and cultures in the war, that we are not as important as we believe we are and let the politicians know, things will begin to change.One thing is being patriotic, another is to think that everybody else in the world wants to be like us.
Posted by: Miguel | Sep 27, 2005 12:01:40 PM
Gandhi was also in a pathetic need for attention.
How much did Mandela's incarceration cost the impoverished black people of South Africa?
Martin Luther King's supporters shouted hate-filled slogans at the American authorities.
'First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. And then you win.' MKGandhi
Posted by: bystander | Sep 27, 2005 12:07:32 PM
Don't worry about the costs, Bert -- the government is saving tons of money by massive cuts to the Veterans Adminstration budget. In the event you get blown to confetti in Iraq, don't expect the quality of medical care that Cheney got for his wobbly knees.
From an editorial standpoint, I am interested in knowing just who is writing Bert's blog. I smell a military censor at work here, especially with the amazing notion of questioning the cost of allowing people to exercise their constitutional right to protest. Enlisted men don't think that way.
Posted by: E. Etage | Sep 27, 2005 12:18:05 PM
What truly puzzles me is how so many Americans can support a war in which only the less well-off citizens are serving in combat areas. The children of priveledge ( Cheney; Bush; congresspersons, with one exception) avoid the war and remain safe at home in schools or work. If all young people without regard for position in life would be made to serve in combat you can well imagine just how quickly this war would end. The current administration claims otherwise, but the major burden of all actions to date has fallen on those among us less able to champion a cause before the 'elite' congresspersons.
Posted by: Joe | Sep 27, 2005 12:20:35 PM
The world view US as a superpower is because we are the richest country. The money support the education, support the all kinds of research so she can develope all kinds of technologies to bloom the ecnomy. So the US citizen will live in a better life generation by generation. But this war have blown this dream away, remember, when America is struggle in this war,the poor country like India and China is catching up with us. This war is dragging us down when other county is rising up. I don't think we should withdaw troops right now, this is not mean that I support the war,but because we have no choice. We need to get out this muddy war as soon as possible, this is the thought I get from this anti-war protest.
Posted by: Wendy | Sep 27, 2005 12:20:45 PM
Mr. Stover states "My friends and I happened to arrive just as anti-war protesters marched past their opponents, so we watched for a few minutes." Was there any time of the day that the anti-war protesters were not marching past the war supporters? The march lasted all day! Was this statement an honest mistake on Mr. Stover's part or an attempt to make the march appear smaller than it actually was?
Posted by: Ed B. | Sep 27, 2005 12:32:14 PM
Mr. Stover, First let me say I wish you well and pray for your safe return from harms way. Please accept my sincere thanks for the sacrifice you are making on behalf of the nation. I was in Washington DC on Saturday. I traveled on a bus for 24 hours to be there. I spent 12 hours in the city, participated in the march and got back on the bus for another 24 hour ride home. It was a long weekend and at 42 I am tired and sore as a result, but I would do it again if given the chance. I know that not everyone feels, as I do, that this war is wrong. I do not expect to change minds by speaking out. I am sorry you witnessed a hateful exchange. What I witnessed was a large group of concerned and passionate citizens voicing their disappointment in the current administrations policies. I also witnessed some in the crowd who taunted and decried the officers doing their duty in and around the Whitehouse. I was offended by their attack of those young men and women and told the individuals as much. My intent and the intent of the people I traveled with (8 buses filled with 375 citizens) was to say to the President, his administration and the rest of the world that we feel he has taken this nation down the wrong path. That we want him to look again at finding another way to achieve the same ends in Iraq and we want him to look now rather than later. 1800 plus Americans have given their lives in pursuit of freedom for the Iraqi people. I have no desire to belittle or minimize that reality. I simply don't want to see still more die. I truly believe there is another way and I feel we have a responsibility to find it.
Posted by: KO in Minneapolis | Sep 27, 2005 12:34:32 PM
With every military action there are studies done within the Pentagon to determine the likely number of casualties and decisions are made by our leaders based on what they deem to be an acceptable number. This particular military action was presented to the American public as a reasonable endeavor under what has turned out to be a series of false premises. Many of the protesters believe the actual reasons were continued control of a geographic area critical to world oil production and the enrichment of the US military-industrial complex. Although our troop's effort in Iraq may be seen as defending the "American Way" by furthering these goals they are most certainly not defending liberty or any other noble platitude and are not making the world safer. Does it give Mr. Stover pause to know that to his life, to the lives of his comrades and to the lives of many innocents has been affixed such a cheap price tag? God bless us all.
Posted by: Tom | Sep 27, 2005 12:40:01 PM
I appreciate Mr. Stover for taking the time to draw attention to this topic. I don't get the sense that his post was very much ideologically slanted one way or the other. Even if he were one to conflate his political stance with patriotism, which too many on both ends of the spectrum do, he isn't in a position where he is able to make political statements, and certainly not under the aegis of his official capacaty.
On a personal note, I'm grateful for Mr. Stover taking the time to draw our attention to the protests. I was one of millions worldwide who protested our initial invasion of Iraq, and I'm not at all happy to see that my misgivings then were justified. This administration is among the most corrupt, inept, and evasive we as an American people have ever seen, and it sorely needs to be held accountable for the missteps, miscalculations, and blatant misleading that have happened under its watch. Where does the buck stop, Mr. President? Accountability must go to the highest level, and if we don't hold him and others accountable, who will?
But Bush is a lame duck president, and he will never face judgement by the voting populace again. What we need to do, as Americans, is make sure our voice is heard in the dozens of congressional elections that will take place across the country next year. Don't bicker or pick fights -- create coalitions, build bridges. Most people in this country are unhappy with how things are going in Iraq, and with how it was (un)planned by those in charge now. Whether you are of the opinion that the U.S. should withdraw everyone immediately, or you think we should at least have definable goals leading towards an exit, find ways to work together. I was adamantly against the war from the outset, as Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and I think it's been mismanaged abominably all along, to the detriment of our troops and the average Iraqi citizen, but I don't support immediate withdrawal, even though I very much sympathize with the sentiments of those who do. But we've got much more in common than our differences, and one big one is our interest in getting the congressionals who rubber stamped this administration out of office.
Posted by: CRD | Sep 27, 2005 12:40:16 PM
The cost of not allowing protests due to the cost involved would be our freedom. You're an idiot, Mr. Stover.
Posted by: JC in Falls Church | Sep 27, 2005 12:51:50 PM
I just wanted to comment that our army is an all voluneter army. The soldiers that are prostesting and their parents knew that when they signed up and took the bonus money. They also knew that there was a chance that their lives would be in danger at some point during their enlistment.
Posted by: GLC212 | Sep 27, 2005 12:52:52 PM
Bush is right when he says that pulling out will leave Iraq in chaos. Iraq is fated for chaos whether we stay or not. Our staying can slow the descent but we cannot, no matter how hard we try, halt that descent. Just like the how we survived the loss of Vietnam and show how discredited the 'domino theory' was, we'll muddle through as Iraq fragments into loosely confederated Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni regions. We should cut our losses and get out.
Posted by: S | Sep 27, 2005 12:54:42 PM
What does Mr. Stover think of excluding the White House sidewalk from our freedom to peacefully assemble and protest? Also, what about the fact that the first one to be arrested on Monday was the mother of a soldier killed "defending our freedoms"?
Posted by: Peter Larson | Sep 27, 2005 12:56:39 PM
I was among 15,000 people who assembled and marched in San Francisco on September 24th.
Although there were many specific protests involved, the major thrust of the demonstration was to end U.S. military and intelligence agency interference in foreign governments.
I saw no pro-war demonstrators, no angry exchanges, just people from ages 1 to 81 expressing their frustration with a President and Congress which refuse to face the facts -- this war is illegal, immoral and not supported by the American people.
Posted by: Joe Pratt | Sep 27, 2005 1:04:35 PM
Sounds to me like Mr Stover (and the rest of us, better known as chickenhawks) is more at risk from the anti-war movement than anything he might encounter in Iraq - I am British but of Indian origin (where I was born) and do not understand the virulence and the point of this anti-war marching.
There was an election in November last year where the American people re-elected George W Bush and so how can all these people claim that they had no opportunity to change governmental policies - you, as we over here, live in a democracy - majority rules, simple as that - if you don't like it, try convincing the other side with the validity of your arguments and if you trust the judgement of your fellow citizens, you should respect their decisions. If you don't trust or respect them, leave the country. Given the overwhelming liberal bias of the major US media (remember Dan Rather?), convincing folks should have been easy but that didn't happen either did it?
Perhaps it's because amongst all this vitriol and hate spewed by the Angry Left there isn't a shred of rational thought, Paul Krugman has been exposed for several misleading statements he's made with respect to the 2000 and 2004 elections - so just get with it, you can't keep not letting the facts get in the way of a good story without getting caught out.
If you want a bit more of the reality about what's going on in Iraq and Afghanistan check out the Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal and look for the diaries from a guy called Arthur Chrenkoff (I think), an Australian who has tried to look beyond the 'newsworthy' stream of bad news that is the only stuff broadcast by major media. And if you want to know the reason why there was regime change in Iraq, well Mr Hussein has a somewhat chequered history of invading neighbours with his armies raping and pillaging, committing genocide against his fellow Iraqis, amassing WMD to use against his neighbours, Israel and anybody else his nuttiness could think of, searching for weapons grade nuclear material and harbouring known terrorists - these are irrefutable facts.
Containment and appeasement are 2 sides of the same coin and history has shown that confrontation of evil-doers is the only way to defeat that evil. If you refuse to learn from history you are doomed to repeat it and I for one and glad that GWB is not that stupid.
Posted by: SKS | Sep 27, 2005 1:04:44 PM
The value of Mr. Stover's "observations" lies in the (mostly) concise and intelligent responses to them posted on this site. GLC212, who waves the "oh, but they volunteered" flag, overlooks or ignores the fact that 1) this was an unnecessary, optional war that no one enlisting could have expected to fight; and 2)as Joe writes, "What truly puzzles me is how so many Americans can support a war in which only the less well-off citizens are serving in combat areas."
It's not the rich, or the children of legislators, who are dying in Bush's ill-conceived, dangerous war of occupation. The rich don't need to enlist in the military, and if they do, they can avoid combat. Just look at our illustrious Commander in Chief, who ducked Vietnam and went AWOL from the National Guard.
Posted by: kim | Sep 27, 2005 1:10:50 PM
Having read all of the prior verbiage, it seems to lead me to the conclusion that "man's inhumanity to man" is no business of the United States or any other so-called civilized nation. Just let tyrants 'do thir thing to whoever they be and in any manner they choose since in the final analyses,the only conclusion to which I can arrive from all of the preceeding is that "We dare not be our brothers keeper!; no matter who so charged us. Can't help but reflect upon the '30's and early '40's in Europe! I guess as Wordsworth said: "The world is too much with us...."!
Posted by: Jim Girzone | Sep 27, 2005 1:15:20 PM
I can't help but to find it amusing(other words come to mind too) that so many of the pro-war fanatics blame soldiers deaths on the anti-war movement; that the protesters are helping the "insurgency" is absurd to say the least. There wouldn't even be an insurgency if we weren't there in first place. Shouldn't that be obvious enough though? Guess not! Oh yeah, Iraqis are dying everyday too but they're not Americans so nevermind.
Posted by: elevate me later | Sep 27, 2005 1:18:04 PM
I've often wondered how much one of Bush's photo ops costs. I wasn't at the protest, but it the anti-war protest wasn't informed, perhaps you can enlighten me. I've heard we won't leave Iraq until the job is finished. I'm just a little fuzzy on what the job is. It started, after all, as a hunt for weapons of mass destruction.
Posted by: Sara Bellum | Sep 27, 2005 1:22:14 PM
This sophomoric exercise would not have passed for an opinion in a high school civics class. Why did the Post bother to publish it?
Posted by: Joe Konn | Sep 27, 2005 1:23:27 PM
I think the debate over the cost of a protest is a little strange.
If our leaders actually listened to us when we wrote them letters, sent them email, held town hall meetings, and called their offices... we wouldn't have to flood the streets. Since our leaders opted out of debate before the war... we are stuck debating it now, when it is messy, risky, and wasteful. But that's what you get when you let the "look before you leap" crowd run Washington. For them it is an exciting game of chess... and we cover the tab.
If the public airwaves allowed for fair representation for both sides... both pro and anti war BEFORE the war started...
We'd have saved lots of money in Iraq AND we'd save money on protests. ----
Good luck and God bless you in Iraq. Never forget that you are a special creature made in the image and likeness of God, and you will walk amongst other equally loved creatures created in the image and likeness of God! May you come back safe in mind, body and soul!
Posted by: BigTobacco | Sep 27, 2005 1:23:53 PM
Recall the reaction to the Dixie Chicks when early in the "war" they came out against it. Such extreme and false patriotism is scary. The current protests of the policies of the President are well placed. I do not detect a lack of support for the troops by the protesters.
Posted by: Paul | Sep 27, 2005 1:23:53 PM
The war in Iraq is wrong. It is costly in human lives and takes away from what should our first objective, finding and punishing osama bin laden. What is hateful about that? I would support the war in Iraq if Cheney's daughters were there instead of in their cushy offices at their jobs and agencies created for them by their father. I would support the war if DeLay's kids were there, if other congressmen's kids were there. I believe if you're going to talk the talk, then you should walk the walk. Cindy Sheehan's son walked the walk. She has every right to protest this unwarranted war. The ones I feel sorry for are those who cling to the belief that their loved ones died for a worthy cause. Five years from now, when G W is no longer around and we have declared victory and gotten out of Iraq, these same parents will be left to ponder the death of their sons or daughters. I feel for them, truly.
Posted by: abuela | Sep 27, 2005 1:32:59 PM
SKS -- the rationalization for heading into this war was WMD & a fictitious "link" to 9/11. Both were in question before the US troops were sent over to Iraq.
Indeed I think that everyone would agree that Hussein was a pretty bad guy and could stand to be removed. With that said, would you support a US government removal of another head of state? -- Who's next? -- The initial pretext of this war is correct, now to justify it as "well Hussein was evil" is wrong. This is why many of us think the war is illegal.
Who is this administration going after next? -- a regime whose human rights issues are questionable? -- That would open up the door to several countries in Africa, China, not to mention the other countries in the axis of evil....
What's next? The administration tried to ignore the rest of the world when it transitioned 5 years ago, now international issues have forced themselves on the US.
I just don't think this administration has many scholars of war. Quite frankly, if they were as well read as they claim, they would have known not to paint a rosy picture (aka Vietnam), and to more fully engage in a FULL & OPEN dialogue with other international parties, rather than an isolationist strategy (see WWI & WWII for consequences).
and you cannot ignore cultural and social issues -- no matter how hand-picked the administration and it's many Bush following members try to surround itself. (See Karen Hughes recent trip to Egypt.)
Now we are indeed in a pickle. If we were to pull out within the next 6 months, our country would be responsible for a civil war in Iraq. However, Iraqi's are increasingly resenting the US presence there. (recent statistice put the foreing insurgents at 4-10% of total "insurgents") Put yourself in their position: before at least there was reasonably clean running water, and electricity that you could rely on.
Now these people cannot even go to the market or school without worrying that they will be blown away. I'd be more than a little PO'd to if there were an occupying force in the US -- wouldn't you?
So, I ask you, WHO will this administration go after next? -- the answer is no one. Because we are relying on foreign countries to finance this war, and they will now dictate our foreign policy. Our military is stretched to thin -- because there are those who wave the stars and stripes, are in the well-to-do range that support the war, but will discourage their children from enlisting because - "well they can get a better job."
Posted by: Looking at both sides | Sep 27, 2005 1:39:06 PM
It takes less money to run a protest than it does to run an ill-conceived war.
Posted by: Steve | Sep 27, 2005 1:45:14 PM
You gotta love the Post's "fair and balanced" news coverage...let's see, we have an active duty National Guard soldier cover the anti-war protests and how about Ken Lay as a guest columnist on Bill Frist's insider trading? Gee, I wonder if they could Brownie to write about what went wrong at FEMA...when he finishes with his paid job of course.
Posted by: Rich | Sep 27, 2005 2:09:02 PM
Patriots in this country have always disagreed with the ruling governments. How do you think the Revolutionary War was won? Patriotism is not just a condition of agreeing with an elected official, especially one that has misled the nation on a number of important issues. Our number one elected official (GWB) and his entire administration have worked diligently (and it is “hard work,” to quote him) to keep the so-called wave of patriotism going. Now, with 60 percent of the nation against him and the war he brought to us, it probably is even harder work.
Patriotism that is empty phrases such as “we are fighting the war there, rather than here,” or “protests only endanger our troops,” are all we can expect from this administration. They have, however, instilled the fear in some of the troops and their families that if we protesters say the operations in Iraq are needless then they have died and been gravely injured in vain. Not necessarily. Those troops were volunteers and they believed that it was necessary for us to invade Iraq (pick any of the serially offered reasons). They truly believe or at first believed that they are doing good. They have to believe it…otherwise many of them cannot handle the disappointment of being a force for evil, and helping the blatent acquisition of oil and wealth for this administration.
This doesn’t diminish the support of the troops from 100 percent of the American people. We realize that they have to obey orders. They have no choice. But that doesn’t keep me and millions of others from disagreeing with their inept commander-in-chief. He got us into this mess, and we, the people, must get us out of it. The method? Protests, followed by an increased attention to voting (and counting of those votes), with a focus on turning over the Congress to those who truly oppose this unethical war, and its obscene costs.
Posted by: Arminda | Sep 27, 2005 2:10:42 PM
There certainly were heated exchanges between pro- and anti-war participants, but the circumstances did not lend themselves to a more civilized discussion. Perhaps it would be good for the pro-war side to know that many of us who marched do in fact support our troops, and admire those who volunteer to keep this country safe, at risk to their lives. The sad reality is that they were betrayed by their commander-in-chief, who chose to put them in harm's way when this country was not threatened by Iraq. Despite the reports of the UN arms inspectors that no WMDs were present, and the absence of any linkage between Iraq and 9/11, and the predictions of many that we were entering a quagmire, the President chose to invade another country, and inflict war on its people. Now we are paying the consequences. I marched because I believe that we have to pressure our government to do something other than "stay the course." It's time to admit our invasion was a mistake, and to seek ways to withdraw as quickly as possible.
Posted by: George | Sep 27, 2005 2:26:40 PM
How does anyone call the liberation of Afghanistan or Iraq a "massive crime?" Or the defense of our nation and our way of life immoral? Or President Bush's response to murdering fascists stupid? If any of the anti-war protesters -- who bend over backwards to claim they're patriots who support our troops while making every effort to strip our nation of the moral right to self defense -- have a better plan to defend our country and the democratic way of life from murdering fanatics who couldn't care less about legal niceties, moral standards, tolerance and compassion, where is their plan? All I ever hear is hatred of Bush, hatred of America's principles in general, and hatred of the very idea of defending this country from overthrow and destruction. Bush has definitely screwed up, but so especially have the troops that protesters repeatedly claim respect, admiration and support for. After all, it's THEIR job to competently execute the President's strategy and in so many ways they blew it. My son has fought in Iraq for 3 tours now. I'm proud of him. He brings the very best American idealism and compassion to a vicious, morally bankrupt part of the world that revels in the death and destruction of everyone they dislike...islamofascists are the practical incarnation of our homegrown liberal America-bashers. The general ignorance, stupidity and lack of foresight of the anti-war crowd is astonishing.
Posted by: chris | Sep 27, 2005 2:33:18 PM
There was only one small spot where the pro-war protesters gathered, estimated to be from 200-400 individuals -- unless, of course, the PRO-war protesters were allowed to congregate without the same permits as the over 150,000 (up to 500,000? Where's the WaPo feature and accurate count, MSM?) ANTI-war protesters were required to have.
Mr. Stover, what exactly did you expect to learn from observing an exchange between two passionately opposed sides, replete with heckling?
Did you take time to speak with the multitudes of veterans who were exercising their Constitutional right to protest? How about a discussion with the many Iraq veterans who were peacefully protesting? I'm confident that they, like my nephew, would be more than happy to explain what brought them to their anti-Iraq war decision. They didn't come by their decision lightly, and would provide you with explanations as well as compassion. And they would also tell you how torn they feel when their buddies are continuing to die in this pointless, faux war. Had you spoken with them, you would have received the education you claim you were seeking.
The cost? Well, 1920 American soldiers' lives, over 14,000 injured and countless innocent Iraqi deaths. A demolished American reputation, with an administration that will likely be called before international tribunals for war crimes. The bilking of the American taxpayer to support mercenary Blackwater militia (who will OUTRANK you in Iraq or anywhere else you serve, plus they will be paid much, much more). The decimation of the Veteran's Administration budget so that help for you and your fellow returning soldiers will not be available. A completely polarized nation wedged by a president who had every opportunity to unite. A blazing deficit that you, your children and grandchildren will be paying off beyond your lifetime. The complete loss of American credibility for initiating a preemptive war based on lies. And that's just for starters.
Oh, and possibly $250,000 to $500,000 in overtime for D.C. police officers. That's not even chump change for Halliburton. Is that the cost you care about?
Posted by: JSS | Sep 27, 2005 2:33:53 PM
How does anyone call the liberation of Afghanistan or Iraq a "massive crime?" Or the defense of our nation and our way of life immoral? Or President Bush's response to murdering fascists stupid? If any of the anti-war protesters -- who bend over backwards to claim they're patriots who support our troops while making every effort to strip our nation of the moral right to self defense -- have a better plan to defend our country and the democratic way of life from murdering fanatics who couldn't care less about legal niceties, moral standards, tolerance and compassion, where is their plan? All I ever hear is hatred of Bush, hatred of America's principles in general, and hatred of the very idea of defending this country from overthrow and destruction. Bush has definitely screwed up, but so especially have the troops that protesters repeatedly claim respect, admiration and support for. After all, it's THEIR job to competently execute the President's strategy and in so many ways they blew it. My son has fought in Iraq for 3 tours now. I'm proud of him. He brings the very best American idealism and compassion to a vicious, morally bankrupt part of the world that revels in the death and destruction of everyone they dislike...islamofascists are the practical incarnation of our homegrown liberal America-bashers. The general ignorance, stupidity and lack of foresight of the anti-war crowd is astonishing.
Posted by: chris | Sep 27, 2005 2:34:14 PM
This column was utterly devoid of substance. Your most insightful comment was that the demonstrations were "interesting" but that there was probably a cost associated with expressing our First Amendment rights. If you honestly are troubled by the trivial expense for security at this event, perhaps you should reexamine your own commitment to defending your fellow Americans' freedoms. What price are you willing to pay? If you're troubled by the idea of shelling out daily wages to the police for freedom at home, what are your thoughts on subsidizing freedom abroad in the currency of American lives?
But perhaps more importantly - what is the Washington Post doing by hosting this so-called column on its website? Ninety-five percent of the posts to this piece were better written and more thoughtful than the author's own uninspired yet troubled musings over the cost of political expression. How did the Army get you on the Post's staff?
Posted by: -W- | Sep 27, 2005 2:36:11 PM
How does anyone call the liberation of Afghanistan or Iraq a "massive crime?" Or the defense of our nation and our way of life immoral? Or President Bush's response to murdering fascists stupid? If any of the anti-war protesters -- who bend over backwards to claim they're patriots who support our troops while making every effort to strip our nation of the moral right to self defense -- have a better plan to defend our country and the democratic way of life from murdering fanatics who couldn't care less about legal niceties, moral standards, tolerance and compassion, where is their plan? All I ever hear is hatred of Bush, hatred of America's principles in general, and hatred of the very idea of defending this country from overthrow and destruction. Bush has definitely screwed up, but so especially have the troops that protesters repeatedly claim respect, admiration and support for. After all, it's THEIR job to competently execute the President's strategy and in so many ways they blew it. My son has fought in Iraq for 3 tours now. I'm proud of him. He brings the very best American idealism and compassion to a vicious, morally bankrupt part of the world that revels in the death and destruction of everyone they dislike...islamofascists are the practical incarnation of our homegrown liberal America-bashers. The general ignorance, stupidity and lack of foresight of the anti-war crowd is astonishing.
Posted by: chris | Sep 27, 2005 2:36:26 PM
I cannot but agree that the rationalisation/pretext of imminent danger was wrong, false if you prefer, but the intent for regime change was and still is correct - I would have favoured a straightforward, 'this is what we're going to do and why' and given that opposition from many (ill-informed and conflicted) quarters was to be expected anyway, the blocking of the second UN resolution was inevitable.
Illegal is a very strong word to use, it implies that there is some law that governs who is allowed to start military actions and who isn't - are people really saying that Mr Hussein had not forsaken his rights under this fictitious law? Under the prevailing laws of the colonies, the American revolutionary war was illegal as was the English civil war - the fact is that there is no man-made law that governs war and certainly none that is natural.
I am asked 'who next?' - well that decision, if relevant, is the job of our political leaders (those that we elect). Of course reality is dictated by limited resources in military terms and the available use of non-military means to effect desirable change - why don't the anti-war movement answer the question, how was the desired regime change going to be brought about with out a war?
Or was it not really desired? I guess a comment complementing the availability of utilities that reminds us of fascist Italy betrays the author's thinking - perhaps he would like to suggest that to the Kurds and the marsh Arabs that Mr Hussein tried to exterminate, Dear Sir, would you like gas through the pipes or as a special deal, down your windpipe?
You are right about your military being stretched, keeping thousands of personnel in Germany is a nonsense and more funding should be made available to the military rather than pork barrel funding which has been shameful under a Republican controlled Congress. The great thing about America's kids is that they generally decide what they want to do and what they don't want to do - why generalise about rich parents preventing their children from joining the military? There are no press gangs rounding up kids in poor neighbourhoods and there isn't a draft so what's the beef? If the argument is that poor kids have no choice, well how about liberals leaving them and their communities alone rather than creating such a disastrous dependency culture?
Being beholden to foreign countries for funding is rather inaccurate - foreigners (and given that a large proportion as Asian central banks, how did they dictate to the US to take this military action?) hold US debt from an investment and economic perspective - they can buy more, hold or sell what they have in the market all of which have significantly greater implications for their own well-being rather than the ability to influence US policy.
There is no pickle, Iraq is a dangerous place, innocent Iraqis are being murdered, brave American and allied servicemen and civilians are being murdered by people who don't want Iraq to experience the freedoms, liberties or scope for happiness that we take for granted - it is a credit to your nation that it has undertaken this immense effort and history will look kindly upon these times and generously on the sacrifices being made - in 5 or 10 years time (which is the proper timescale to take stock of whether the effort was worth it), if the middle east is a much better place to live for all it's citizens much as Germany and Japan were post WWII, the anti-war movement (as the anti-nuclear movement before it) is going to be shown to have got it wrong (yet again).
At least we seem to agree that now is not the time to cut and run - so why don't the anti-war folks do something constructive for Iraq by talking up the prospects for that country, support the troops (allied and Iraqi), help build the infrastructure, tell them that there will be light at the end of the tunnel, that the great American lead coalition will stick by them until the dawn of a bright future and what a wonderful thing is that timeless beauty, Liberty.
Posted by: SKS | Sep 27, 2005 2:38:00 PM
"Sounds to me like Mr Stover (and the rest of us, better known as chickenhawks) is more at risk from the anti-war movement than anything he might encounter in Iraq -"
What? At last count, over 2000 "coalition forces" including more than 1800 Americans have been killed in Iraq. At last count, no one has been killed by the anti-war movement. Therefore, Mr. Stover appears to face a great deal more risk in Iraq. However, the point is well taken about the chicken hawks. They prefer to engage the enemy by shooting off their mouths from extremely long distances.
Posted by: RTB | Sep 27, 2005 2:40:59 PM
"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" -Samuel Johnson-
Posted by: The Drunken Boat | Sep 27, 2005 2:49:03 PM
How much will it cost to provide long-term medical care to more than 14,000 severely disabled soldiers? How much will it cost to provide assistance to the families that will now need to depend on some form of public assistance due to loss of life of their main source of income? How much will it cost to provide long-term treatment for PTSD? How much will it cost when the government eventually ponies up to the effects of Depleted Uranium that they are currently are agent-Oranging/Gulf War Syndroming? And most importantly, how much will the non-financial cost be to 1900 families.
Posted by: Larry | Sep 27, 2005 2:56:04 PM
From Chris: "How does anyone call the liberation of Afghanistan or Iraq a "massive crime?" Or the defense of our nation and our way of life immoral? Or President Bush's response to murdering fascists stupid?"
Calling the invasion of Iraq "the defense of our nation and our way of life" is an appalling lie. Although a cesspool, Iraq was no danger to us. That's obvious now and it was obvious before the war. The assertion that the slaughter in Iraq is about defending freedom is laughable. The American people are finally getting it, and no more-patriotic-than-thou posturing will suppress the truth.
Posted by: Jim | Sep 27, 2005 2:59:24 PM
I have to agree with Joe Konn's comments earlier: "This sophomoric exercise would not have passed for an opinion in a high school civics class. Why did the Post bother to publish it?"
I can understand the original idea of this blog. But it is painfully obvious that the Post is being played for a sucker by the military. Perhaps in the next installment, Bert can identify just who is writing and editing his blog postings. His postings (especially today's) reads like DoD propaganda.
Posted by: E. Etage | Sep 27, 2005 3:01:06 PM
In regards to the last post by Chris:
Let me see if I got this right: your son has served three tours in Iraq and you're saying the soldiers deserve some of the blame for this train-wreck that is Iraq?
The torturers and sadists who have destroyed our country's reputation maybe, yes, they should take some of the blame. The men and women who were sent to fight a war to re-elect the President? The men and women who were commanded to risk their lives in an unnecessary conflict that has made this country less respected abroad and less safe at home? Those soldiers deserve the blame for this mess? Your own son hasn't suffered enough?
Regarding freedom in Afghanistan, as mentioned at the beginning of your post: war with Afghanistan was a choice the President made - it was only one of a multitude of choices available. This war, which is still being fought, has brought limited political and religious freedom to the people of Afghanistan, but very little in the way of security. There were, and still are, many less violent ways to bring freedom and consolidate democracy in the area. If America would put 1% of its power behind securing a political solution there instead of a strictly military one both nations would be far better off. There WERE many less violent ways of dealing with the Taliban and with al-Qaeda in the wake of 9/11, and as this week's trial in Spain has proven, legal ways are both more effective and involve far fewer innocent deaths.
It is not the freedom the anti-war movement reviles, it is the brutal methods with which it is sought but rarely achieved. That's why we're celled the "anti-war" movement, not the "anti-freedom" movement. Perhaps this has dispelled some of your confusion.
Posted by: -W- | Sep 27, 2005 3:02:11 PM
"At last count, no one has been killed by the anti-war movement."
Right, so giving succour to the enemy does not directly lead to the deaths of coalition forces so that's ok then. The point about chicken hawks was ironic but I guess the Angry Left doesn't get irony - yes, I'm not in the military but when I was making my career decisions as a youth, we were in the phoney peace after the Cold War and even in the UK, the peace dividend meant an alarming cut in defence spending which together with my misplaced favourable opinion of centrist politics meant that I didn't even consider a military career - the real test will come as and when I have children.
I hope to be proud of them whatever they do but if they choose to serve their country (my adopted country) with the prospect of the ultimate sacrifice, I can't imagine greater pride as well as unbelievable heartache and that's why those kids are the finest in both of our countries, they deserve total support in their decision to enlist and in the job that they are doing - their parents deserve blessings from the rest of us whatever our political views.
I'll stop shooting off my mouth RTB and I wish you well.
Posted by: SKS | Sep 27, 2005 3:08:23 PM
To Chris, if it's the military that blew it in Iraq, why is Donald Rumsfeld still secretary of defense? Why does Bush keep saying Rumsfeld is doing a great job?
Posted by: sjr | Sep 27, 2005 3:12:02 PM
To sjr...the same reason that Brownie was doing a great job! Bush doesn't have a clue as to what kind of jobs his appointees are doing.
Posted by: Arminda | Sep 27, 2005 3:28:53 PM
Cost of the protest. Minimal, when it comes to the cost of Bush's Iraqi war. Just a minute or two on the following Iraqi cost meter will cover all of wages for the security forces at the protest. Bush is bleeding the sap out of this nation!
Posted by: john | Sep 27, 2005 3:48:23 PM
Americans need to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror. I don't believe they will like what they see. WHAT IS SEE IF A BUNCH OF IGNORANT TRASH WORRIED ABOUT HOW MUCH INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS COST AND NOT WORRIED ABOUT FREEDOM WHICH THEY ARE GIVING AWAY.
Posted by: KATMAN | Sep 27, 2005 3:50:18 PM
Pause to remember the late Don Adams -- a genuinely funny man.
Posted by: E. Etage | Sep 27, 2005 4:10:45 PM
Mr. Stover's only point in his essay is to question the cost of security for a peaceful demonstration against a war which was based on demonstrably false pretenses. This question merits no response unless Stover is ready to follow the logical path of his point and propose, with all seriousness, an end to the First Ammendment. I have some questions for Mr. Stover and I hope he can make time to answer them.
1) Are you equally prepared to put a bullet into the head of an Iraqi child, to hand over an innocent husband and father to a fate of torture and possible death, or to make mistakes which cost innocent lives, as you are to detain or kill a suspected terrorist? Because the duty you seem ready and eager to accept may require you do these things or worse.
2) To rephrase Cindy Sheehan's main question, why are you going to Iraq? Do you truly believe that you will make America, Iraq or the world a safer or better place by serving in this administration's war? If so, how?
3) Have you considered your alternative, i.e. refusal? This would almost certainly result in jail time, though amnesty may come after 2008 (I hope). It is a choice which other soldiers have made with honor and dignity. I invite you to pray over this question if you are religious (I am not), and/or to consult your best conscience, which I belive all people posess.
Posted by: james | Sep 27, 2005 4:53:40 PM
I have tried and tired but I still can't get how anyone can be pro-war. I am pro troops but I am also anti-war. I bet if you had a chance to talk with MOST of the demonstrators I think that they would agree. I can understand defending your self if some one attacks you but to create bogus information and then declare that we may be attacked in the future and go in and have over 2,000 Americans and allies killed and over 100,000 Iraqis killed makes no sense to me. Can you please kindly explain Pro-War to me?
Posted by: T. Johnson | Sep 27, 2005 4:54:57 PM
Engaging in ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stover is misguided. As I noted above, he really doesn't take a side in this debate (quite right, as he is constrained by his active-duty position from doing so), and he's done all of us a service by highlighting the protest. We need to have a national debate on the administration's missteps and misleading in Iraq, and I'm glad that Mr. Stover chose to focus on the protest and create a forum for this much needed debate over the debacle over there.
Many of our troops are dead and many more are maimed because Bush sent them to Iraq. Even if we cast aside valid questions about whether the war was justified or based on false premises, there are equally valid questions about how the administration's decision to run the war on the cheap, depriving our troops of adequate supplies and armor, sending them there without a realistic occupation plan or even articulating a set of reachable goals and an exit strategy, that should and must be answered. Bush and his administration need to be held accountable for much, including our own troops who have died and are continuing to die in vain.
Accountability is the issue here. We are Americans, and our elected officials serve us. They can be recalled, whether through election or through impeachment.
It starts with us, the voters. Get out there and make waves. We've got a year until the next Congressional elections. Build coalitions and work with people on the common ground we share. If your Congressman or Congresswoman or Senator rubber-stamped the current administration's decisions, get them out of office! Demand more.
That's what our men and women in the armed forces are fighting for, and that's what the protestors are also fighting for. The buck may stop with the President, but as the President rules only by the will of the people, the buck really stops with none other than us.
You want change, get out there and do something.
Thanks again, Mr. Stover, both for your service to our country, and for your focus on a very important question that impacts us all.
Posted by: CRD | Sep 27, 2005 5:10:53 PM
It's amazing how many people here are criticizing Bert for being noncommittal, unreflective, not sympathetic with the left, not sympathetic with the right, whatever. Geez, he's just a citizen relaying his own observations, not a reporter. Leave the poor guy alone. I guess people on both sides are so angry that even if you're a moderate like Bert they consider you to be the enemy (reminds me of Bert standing in the middle and getting yelled at by both sides). Protestors love to jump to conclusions. Especially funny is seeing people getting upset at Bert's question about the costs. It's probably not a criticism at all, just an idle question based on his own awe at the level of security. Maybe he's criticizing the amount of security. Who knows. But activists tend to interpret ambiguous statements in the most negative way possible. The best activists detect all sorts of ulterior motives in those who disagree with them -- how else can they explain away smart people who oppose their viewpoint?
Posted by: Jack | Sep 27, 2005 5:28:42 PM
I thought your most inciteful take on the anti war movement on Sunday was the cast of disparate left wing frieks who apparently think they are entitled to revise pre war history, make outrageous claims about Bush and otherwise bad mouth America all in the name of patriotism. What a bunch of utter losers. This anti war march just hardened my resolve against these people ever having a say in our foreign policy or governance.
Good luck and God bless.
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 5:32:44 PM
All you liberal left wing nuts are a bunch of cowards who let other people die for your freedoms.
Posted by: Fred | Sep 27, 2005 5:36:18 PM
I'll tell you why Mr. Stover is writing for the Washington Post- because he is in the military.Thats why his discursive ramblings are trenchant "insights". And puleeze, do not take issue with his medicore writing or his disingenuous questions, it will be considered churlish and unpatriotic. The more interesting question is-why is the quality of the writing, not to mention the thinking, unimportant to the Washington Post?
Posted by: Bonnie | Sep 27, 2005 5:37:34 PM
You reference those who "revise pre war history [and] make outrageous claims about Bush...."
Could you elaborate a bit and share with the group instances of historical revisionism and "outrageous claims" that you take issue with, and perhaps also give us your take on what is the justification for the Iraq war and the deaths of our troops there?
Posted by: C | Sep 27, 2005 5:48:02 PM
If anyone interpreted my questions as ad hominem attacks on Mr. Stover, I'm not sure how they got to that conclusion. The questions I asked were sincere and took into account the day-to-day, on-the-ground reality of the war in Iraq, as well as real questions of personal conscience and responsibility. They are questions that most soldiers hopefully ask themselves without prompting from myself or anyone else. The reality remains that being a soldier, in any war but especially this one, means killing other people, many of them innocent. Who here is prepared to do this for no apparent reason? And no apparent reason seems to underly this war and the continued occupation of Iraq.
CRD's statement "That's what our men and women in the armed forces are fighting for" refers to no clear anticedent. Does he mean congressional representation, our Constitution (both fine things) or what? And how are soldiers in Iraq fighting for any of the positive things CRD mentions? A serious, rational answer would not contain platitudes like Freedom, Democracy, Liberty, etc. Such abused and now-meaningless abstractions do not answer the central question, how does the US war in Iraq or participation in it, serve our country, or anyone in it or outside it? I'm sorry if anyone is offended by my questioning the general value of military service in the Iraq war, but thankfully our Constitution allows me that right.
P.S. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that the only decent course of action America can take now is to begin the process of handing over Iraq, in sections if necessary, to third parties who can start over rebuilding Iraq as a single nation or as several. The US has no credibility or legitimacy in Iraq, and so should arrange for someone who might have these qualitues to take over. (The UN, despite its many faults, comes to mind.) I don't support pulling all troops out immediately, as civil war and carnage would result immediately. But the current policy and Iraqi constitution leads either to a second Iran or to civil war a little further down the road, with US troops playing the role of very unfunny Barney Fifes in the middle of it.
Posted by: james | Sep 27, 2005 5:50:12 PM
Apparently the rabid emotional status of the anti-war crowd doesn't tolerate anyone who has a moderate observation or who refuses to immediately leap to the kook anti war side.
I am around anti-war types all day and they are so filled with anti Bush lies and propaganda its disgusting. I regularly cringe when I hear Halliburton arranged the war or Bush lied about WMD. Most reasonable people in red state america understand we went to war for the threat of use of WMD and they also realized Bush's intell and that of the world community was wrong. In the end though, WMD or not, Saddam was still a threat that would use WMD at some point, at some time. That is why we went.
You guys are no different from my right wing pro life nuts who really believe liberals want abortions.
The left wing kook fringe is back in America. Not for long though, this time its different, now there is Fox News and talk radio.
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 5:54:10 PM
You reference those who "revise pre war history [and] make outrageous claims about Bush...."
Could you elaborate a bit and share with the group instances of historical revisionism and "outrageous claims" that you take issue with, and perhaps also give us your take on what is the justification for the Iraq war and the deaths of our troops there?
Yes. First of all there is never any justification for death and no one sends soldiers to die. That's just left wing propaganda. If war were simply sending soldiers to die, there would be no war, cause NO ONE would go. It would defeat its purpose pretty quickly. So, please dispense with the propaganda. War is hellish enough on its own, you don't need to make it worse by spewing ridiculous propaganda.
On the issue of revisionist history. Yes the anti war movement is in the process of coordinating a revision of what lead us to vote Bush the authority to go to war.
1) Countrary to the left's propaganda, if this is Bush's war, it is just as much Congress' war as they voted him authority. As Congress is elected directly by the people that make it the people's war.
2) Bush was wrong about WMD being in Iraq. Most normal people understand this and accept it. However the UN weapons inspectors assumed he had WMD, as did the Clinton administration. So its not a Bush original idea that Saddam had WMD. Many have reasoned this. However, there is no disputing the fact that Saddam made post-mortem payments to families of sucicide bombers in the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza are not in Iraq. This makes Saddam a supporter of international terrorism.
3) Saddam had demonstrated the courage to use WMD against the Kurds. He killed thousands of them with chemical weapons.
4) Saddam voilated the terms of his surrender after Gulf War I.
The war was not illegal as a matter of fact and as a matter of opinion I believe it is in the best interest of a free middle east and a safer America.
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 6:10:57 PM
The above comments show two Americas in more than the political sense. I note that only a few of the pro-Iraq-war crowd seem to be able to express their views cogently and rationally or even write correct, grammatical English. Is it their overweening anger on display, or have decades of sub-par public education taken their toll?
Posted by: A. Lannus | Sep 27, 2005 6:21:37 PM
I guess we're just not as smart as the liberals. Perhaps that's why we keep losing elections.
Posted by: Dellington Munyholder | Sep 27, 2005 6:33:55 PM
In regards to the "Bush was right all along argument" as posted above. You seem to amazingly somehow still believe that:
1) Before the invasion it was credible to believe that Saddam had WMDs; 2) If Saddam had WMDs, he must have had the delivery systems for them to be used against the US as well; and 3) Saddam possessed the will and determination to use these weapons against the United States.
1) The Bush Administration selectively culled and cherry picked only the intelligence that supported the claim that Iraq possessed WMDs. The State Department Intelligence Agency's own report on the subject came to the exact opposite conclusion. Like most things to come from the State Department, it was ignored by this administration. The Senate Report on Prewar Intelligence noted that evidence not supporting the weapons claim was given little attention. It is inaccurate to say that all of the intelligence was wrong. The intelligence this administration chose to use was wrong.
2) Iraq did not possess WMDs, as many in the intelligence community believed, and it certainly did not posses delivery systems to use such weapons. The near universal agreement on this issue before the war betrays just how little the American people thought through the proposition that "If Saddam has weapons then... he will use them on us!" They forgot the question of "With what missiles/airplanes/submarines..." Read the Duelfer report for a thorough analysis of Iraq's weapons programs and delivery systems to learn just how off the mark the administration's claims were. I can't recommend it strongly enough.
3) The pro-war argument clings to the fallacy that had Saddam possessed weapons, and the capacity to use them on American targets, then he would. That sound logic ignores a little thing called self preservation, which prevents world leaders, and megalomaniacal ones especially, from oh, randomly deciding to kill themselves, which is what an attack on America would have been equivalent to. Saddam was never considered to be a suicide bomber. (This is when you say, "Oh but you know those Arabs, they're all the same.")
Now, those of us who logically thought through the Administration's logic that "If he has weapons... he'll attack us!" were typically against the war.
Those who simply thought, "WMD's hell, say no more" are hopefully now beginning to see the incongruities in their reasoning and another example of why to distrust this Administration.
Last note, I'm sorry, but if you're writing for the goddamn Washington Post I expect you to have something to say. This isn't Craig's List, it's a respected paper. Here is a synopsis of Stover's article: "I watched a protest this weekend. It was loud. Sometimes people got angry. Maybe people should just be quiet instead." Thank you, DOD Press Corps!
Oh and Brick, I like lamp too.
Posted by: W | Sep 27, 2005 6:48:33 PM
why are so few in the "right-wing" camp asking hard questions of the government we all share?
It seems to me that so many of the things that are going on abroad transcend petty domestic politics. Our soldiers dying at the behest of our government affects us all, regardless of party affiliation. Whether you voted for Bush in 2000 or you voted for Gore shouldn't impact your desire to ask "why"?
If the government sincerely thought there were WMDs there, then what was the case that they posed an imminent threat? I mean, sure, no one thought Saddam was a nice guy, but for us to engage in a preemptive war, don't we have to have a credible case not just of a potential threat, or some violation of a UN accord, but of a threat that's actually imminent?
Prior to our invasion of Iraq, there were reasonable questions as to the validity of the WMD claims that were raised to the administration and never answered -- why was that the case?
Why were our troops sent into Iraq in too few numbers to hold down the occupation and quell resistance?
Why were our troops sent into Iraq inadequately supplied and under-armored? That's a disservice to the men and women who volunteered to put their lives on the line for us. Who's answerable for that? If not Bush, then who?
Should we have sent our troops into Iraq to take out Saddam's secular government rather than focus on the Islamic militants of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Where's Osama? Shouldn't he have been brought to justice?
Why have we had to deal with an ever-shifting rationale for the war?
I'm in a red state. I have faith in God, the power of love, and our American ideals of freedom and justice. I don't have faith in the president or any other man -- we're all fallible. It troubles me that we have so many who simply aren't willing to ask hard questions and demand our government be accountable.
Posted by: D | Sep 27, 2005 6:55:21 PM
I believe the security detail was there to protect each side from the other. Since the pro side was outnumbered 10 to 1, it could have been very ugly. The cost is all beside the point. The right to assemble and protest is protected in the Constitution. One writer stated that anti-war protesters like to see soldiers die. What an absolute distortion. It is a tactic frequently used by the administration and its supporters. If you oppose the war, you are anti-patriotic, you support terrorism, you aid and abet the enemy. This is a bald faced attempt to marginalize those who do not agree with this administration about this war in Iraq. It avoids the need to have a real debate, one that requires each side to respect the other.
It is true that once a war is started, it takes a long time to stop one. Now that we are in Iraq, it will be a very long time before we are out. The cost in human life will be staggering. What will we achieve in the end? No one, not even President Bush himself really knows. The start of the war was based on false assumptions, and the reasons for this war have morphed into this "save the world from evil dictators" mantra. I guess Iran does not count, nor does North Korea. Then there are our good buddies the Saudies. Funny thing is, Saddam was our good buddy when he was fighting against Iran.
Our foreign policy should be more complex than the simple jingoism peddled by Mr. Bush and company. We need to be careful who we call our friends and consider what our support does to the cititzens of that country. One thing we are not is the world's policeman.
Posted by: David | Sep 27, 2005 6:58:25 PM
"UN weapons inspectors assumed he had WMD."
Are you referring to when the UN team was there, consistently finding nothing, or when they were ordered out of the country by an administration fed up with their inability to find non-existent weapons?
Have you read anything by Hans Blix? Have you read the reports written by the inspectors who were there? This isn't Chomsky I'm citing, it's the UN and the reports of our own government. Turn off the Fox, read one of these documents and then tell me that the decision to go to war was a rational one.
Where are you getting your information?
Posted by: W | Sep 27, 2005 7:01:09 PM
For all the socialist "peaceniks" who have never created peace, let the warriors handle peace making. Even the U.N. can't make peace. In the last 60 years the U.N. has handled The Korean War - still 40 thousand US troops there 55 years later - Truman(D)thing. And then there is the Balkans with US troops still committed 10 years later - a Clinton(D)thing. Of course the people of Vietnam still are trampled in despotism after the Kerry Fonda connection freed them - a Johnson(D)thing. And, the people of Cuba still suffer after Kennedy(D) got weak kneed over the bay of pigs. The U.N. also got involved in the first Gulf war leading Bush to create commitments of mediocrity, when the warriors could have ended it. And then we spent 12 years spending millions each year for 'No Fly Zones' over Iraq - a Clinton(D) thing. Catching any democratic party trends here? Of course the 'Peaceful Left' has a terrible history of failure and no peace.
Posted by: Jeff Crocket | Sep 27, 2005 7:03:57 PM
1) Saddam had WMD because that's what he used on the Kurds. What he had just before the war is another issue. I believe UN intell was that "he probably has them" but we just don't know and can't find them, oh and we won't solve this peacefully because, well f you we are the anti American UN and we don't like to enforce our resolutions. That's essentially what Hans Blick was saying during the UN resolutions.
2) It doesn't take a lot to deliver a canister of mustard gas. A cargo ship or a charter airplane to central America would do the trick. Then you could pretty much sneak across the boarder like 30 zillion mexicans do. Delivery isn't that hard. A nuke is riskier and harder to deliver but a ship sailing into an port city could do it.
3)If Saddam was intersted in self preservation how do explain his situation now? How do you explain his decision to fight rather than surrender in the face of the US military. Another point is that a surrogate for Saddam could deliver chemical agents to the US and it would be very hard to trace it back to Iraq. But perhaps the most ridiculous thing is to think that the you and the anti war movement would be for roasting 6 million innocent iraqis in a nuclear holocost if it turned out you were wrong about his level of intelligence.
Those who were pro-war from the begginning thought long and hard about this and decided it wasn't worth being wrong about this for US or for innocent citizens who happen to live in terrorist nations.
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 7:07:27 PM
One more thing. I love desk.
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 7:08:11 PM
Brittany Spears blogs on the web for Washington Post on the Virginity and Chastitiy Movement.
Posted by: D | Sep 27, 2005 7:35:28 PM
Brick arguing with you is like riding a big furry tractor. But just for the hell of it: Yes, Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, we sold them to him. Then there was Gulf War 1, inspectors went in and over the next 10 years they did a decent job of destroying those weapons. Yes there was uncertainty about the existence of weapons before the war. That is very different from the slam dunk, smoking gun, mushroom cloud rationale being repeated ad nauseam by the Bushies.
True, delivering a can of mustard gas isn't that hard. However, mustard gas isn't that bad. I mean it, read on. The scare factor surrounding mustard gas is completely overhyped. Exposure to mustard gas in WWI resulted in fatalities of around 1% of cases. Seriously, look it up. It was used as a debilitating agent, not a sure fire way to make your enemies drop dead. From the Council on Foreign Relations: "Mustard gas causes severe blisters and, if inhaled, can also damage the lungs and other organs. It is usually disabling—sometimes gruesomely so—but not fatal." What killed the Kurds was sarin; mustard gas was used to prevent them from escaping. Atropine can protecet against sarin exposure; whether or not our government has that stockpiled in adequate numbers is another question.
Yeah, I don't think we went to war over mustard gas man. Or any other chemical WMD when anyone can do ten times the damage with easy to weaponize fertilizer and a transcript of the McVeigh trial.
The WMD arguement was then, and remains now, bunk.
Posted by: W | Sep 27, 2005 7:46:27 PM
its a basic tenet of logic that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. the fact that no WMDs have been found speaks little to whether they were there before the invasion. obviously they had WMDs at somepoint because Saddam used them to kill thoushands of kurds. so the question becomes (if we assume for arguments sake the WMDs are no longer inside Iraq's boarders) when did they get rid of them?? one day before the invasion? if it took us a year to find saddam hussein hiding in a hole imagine how difficult it is to find WMD that were hid or possibly destroyed during our invasion.
why didnt we have more troops in Iraq to begin with? well probably because the more troops you have in Iraq the more of them are targets and possibly die. and we know all the liberals out there use the death toll against the president when ever they can.
its war, people are going to die, its no revelation. 1,900 dead americans is nothing to thumn your nose at but niether is the prospect of an Arab country of 40 million with representative government. or the deposing of a leader who clearly represented a nexus between WMD capability, willingness to use them with impunity and a fundamental disregard for the international community and humanity in general.
on the subject of the somewhat ridiculous discussion thats been started about body armor and humvee armor...if you decide its important and urgent enough to go to war, you go to war, you dont wait around until a year until you have better equipment if you have the most thoroughly and completely equipped army in the world.
and seriously everybody who wants a withdrawl or a withdrawl date (i dont know if anyone on this blog is part of this group) you really are helping the other side, giving them hope, and convincing our more hardened enimies of the very fact that makes them think that we are a big fragile target ripe for being taken down--we cant tolerate even any degree of military casualties.
there is a very good chance that in terms of casualties in exchange for results this war will end up being the most economic war ever.
and lets be honest, when you get down to it the job discription of anyone joining the military includes dying.
Posted by: | Sep 27, 2005 8:24:56 PM
Boy liberals sure like to hear themselves talk. You people are all spouting the same long-winded rants. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Posted by: mike | Sep 27, 2005 8:29:51 PM
I read the piece by Mr. Stover, reporting for duty in a few days for a stint in Iraq. Like everyone here, I hope for his safe return to his family and friends.
I was privileged enough to have been born into the middle class - the most affluent generation in the history of mankind (if we're talking GNP).
Mr. Stover has a pretty good chance for making it back home unscathed. Hopefully, he'll see some positive signs of nation-building and democratization taking root in what was once a pretty secular country on the Koran-frenzied Arab Street.
However, while he's in country, a few of his fellow soldiers won't fare so well and may return home in pieces, if at all. That is a high cost to pay for your country, but it's a sacrifice they chose to make to defend their country against enemies foreign and domestic.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, thousands of regular Americans volunteered to fight the good fight to "get" the people responsible for the horrific attacks and make Americans back home "safe."
However, at last count, not one of those hijackers or their backers were Iraqis, but I digress. The fight was to rid the world of terror, which one general opined was like declaring a war on air power - it can't be won.
Saddam was "our" guy when we needed him to send dead Iranian boys back home to Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war. Per the New York Times magazine article on 9/11/05, he served our needs then, utilized our intelligence to deliver gas attacks on the Iranians. Like Noriega, he overstayed his welcome and occupied George I's Kuwaiti pals to help defray some war costs, and got on our hit list.
My point is this, this is the wrong war fought the wrong way against the wrong people. Our best hope is to install another "good" dictator there, like a Mubarak or - he's tanned, rested, and ready - Saddam Hussein to keep the Shiites from putting the House of Saud up in jihadi flames.
The German army had a reasonably easy drive into Stalingrad, but getting out was the trick. Baghdad was not the problem, but the cost of this war and the folly of it are more than enough to cause good Americans to ask "why Iraq?" as even good Germans might have asked "Why Russia?"
We are in Saudi Arabia for the long haul. The al Qaeda leaders use that as a recruiting tool for their jihad. This is another chapter in the bloody history of the crusades. Can we say that anyone has won or lost in that time?
We need to step back and look at where this country is headed. This is 1984 and we will live in code orange for the rest of our insecure lives, with momemntary flashes of code red. While we fight this faceless enemy abroud, we continue to sink into a state unlike the poor and desperate souls of New Orleans - on the wrong end of the political divide and paying the price for our "security" in the continual deferral of the "American Dream."
How can we be secure with the griniding poverty in our own midst? With crumbling levees and a dysfunctional health care system? What is the true cost of security when we must forego needs like education, clean air and water, and social security to pay for it? Who are we defending this country from, and will it be worth defending when all is said and done?
This is a country that in 2005 can't even distinguish between science and fiction (see: intelligent design). We need to distinguish between might and right, and
There are two America's, and it is sad to know that the same base, religious fundamentalism that is hijacking our Republic will exert its same insidious effect in the jihadist's cause on this "democracy" we are imposing in the Middle East. May God help us, indeed.
Posted by: SK | Sep 27, 2005 8:44:12 PM
People have been making this WMD argument since the times of Christopher Columbus. Indians had them, used them, and thankfully we had the good sense to conquered those evil savages. That is just the way it is. Its history people.
Posted by: Kip Bladderstone | Sep 27, 2005 8:55:13 PM
Rational people, whether they believe that the war was wrong or right, are not now screeching for the immediate withdrawal of troops. Sane people understand that that would certainly lead to more death and destruction to ordinary Iraqis than has occurred thus far. So go ahead and castigate Bush until you are blue in the face, proclaim his supposed stupidity or alleged deception from the mountaintops, if you desire. At the same time, however, perhaps you might think about what future course would be best for Americans, Iraqis, and the rest of the world. If you do so, then maybe in 2006 and 2008 we can have elections and debates ideas for solving these problems instead of shrill fingerpointing and mindless slogans about blood and oil. But that's the real kicker for the dems isn't it? Actually putting forth ideas. If Kerry had voiced *any* plans or ideas that resonated with Americans, maybe a few thousand more of the 80% of Americans who disapprove of Bush would have voted for him. Think about it--Bush has one of the lowest approval ratings ever but he would probably beat Gore or Kerry again if another election were held tomorrow. This is because any solutions or ideas offered by the left are drowned out by the shrill, simple minded, and elitist nonsense spewed by people like the posters on this message board. I am by no means a Bush supporter, but you people remind me why the majority of regular Americans, though they think Bush failed in most respects, voted him back in in '04. It's because you think you're so much smarter than they are, you mock them if they have faith in something you can't see, you want them to feel guilty for owning a home and a car, you appear to hate capitalism, you talk as if the French are inherently morally superior to Americans, etc. (e.g. SK's blathering, silly nonsense about a "base, religious fundamentalism" that is apparently "hijacking our republic" blah blah blah)
Posted by: Michael | Sep 27, 2005 9:42:51 PM
yeah, I went to observe this protest... and there were people... and they said some stuff...then they walked around... that was about it...I'm deep!
Posted by: Chris | Sep 27, 2005 9:53:44 PM
They talk about "honor" a lot. Their TV ads show young men slaying mythical dragons, climbing walls of fantasy, standing tall in multicolored uniforms.
But let's be honest – that’s not what the military has them do. We train them to kill. In obedience to those who displayed cowardice during their own time to serve, our servicemen have been directed to invade a nation that did nothing to us.
Yes, they are demonstrating their willingness to face hardship and even death for our country, but are being used, abused for the personal political gain of crooked politicians.
Our kids are killing sons and daughters in another country - people who are defending their land, resisting a foreign invasion and occupation.
Are these the right values? Is this what we want our kids to do with their lives? In life, few decisions are as important as the ones regarding life and death. Yet we seem to idealize those who abdicate that decision, doing the unchallenged bidding of someone else, perhaps someone with a political axe to grind.
Is that smart? Where is the honor in killing on command?
I am someone who believed that the price of living in a free country was the active defense of it. I enlisted and volunteered for the war of my generation. None of us will ever be the same.
What will happen to those who serve when they realize they, like me, were just suckers, . . fooled, tricked by their own good intentions to do terrible things to others? There will be a terrible price to pay for this self-righteous violence, far worse than letting our sons and daughters be used for terrible purposes, far more than the tens of thousands of physically, mentally, and morally wounded troops who come home in and out of boxes, more than the billions of dollars wasted. We have lost our humanity, and any soul we might have had.
Posted by: | Sep 27, 2005 10:23:56 PM
My post went out without my name. I, George Kamburoff, wrote the note ending "We have lost our humanity, and any soul we might have had."
Posted by: george kamburoff | Sep 27, 2005 10:29:07 PM
"Our kids are killing sons and daughters in another country - people who are defending their land, resisting a foreign invasion and occupation."
This just shows how nutty liberals have finally become. "defending their land" Its as if the kook fringe of liberalism is now mainstream liberalism. I'm gleeful! I can't wait to watch as you guys implode. Its as if the self destruct sequence has been started... "Liberalism will self destruct in 30 seconds, 29..28..."
Posted by: Brick Stellerman | Sep 27, 2005 10:39:13 PM
Why aren't you over there killing for peace? When I believed in it, I had the guts to go myself.
By the way, your countdown won't be for liberalism, not now that most Americans have grudgingly seen where we got with the extremist cowards, crooks and nutbags now in government.
The Bush Cabal has defrauded us into war. That's not just an impeachable offense, it is a capital crime, and demands legal redress.
Posted by: george kamburoff | Sep 27, 2005 11:01:57 PM
I was in DC on Saturday for the MASSIVE peaceful outpouring of opposition agianst Bush and his War against Iraq.
Brent Stover is concerned about the costs of this event. I was most impressed that there were few police or officials, because the crowd was peaceful. The real issue is the costs of the Iraq War--1,920 deaths of US troops, loss of American credibility, and estimates that the total cost of the war will reach $1 trillion.
Mr. Stover--these are the real issues and the reason more than 300,000 Americans joined together in collective protest against this disastrous war.
Posted by: Judy | Sep 27, 2005 11:06:42 PM
we have lost our humanity and our soul we might have had? well i actually agree in a sense with that last part, the soul "we might have had". im not sure what golden age people think the bush administration and the war in iraq has obliterated. compared to the two biggest wars from the last 70 years (WWII and Vietnam) this war has very few casualties and has a much more reasonable motivation and will have a much more results.
and i think you have to be basically detached from reality to say our soilders have been, "used, abused for the personal political gain of crooked politicians". what personal political gain has any crooked politician gained (or could they have ever hoped to gain) from invading iraq? i think we invaded iraq because people with the power to make such decisions (including congress) decided (perhaps, PERHAPS, wrongly) that it was in our legitimate security interest to do so. obviously if we had not invaded and (for arguments sake) in the interim bin laden and saddam hussien had collaborated to carry out another terrorist attack on american soil, hard core democrats (politicans and non politicians) would be screaming at the top of their lungs about the administration's failure to "CONNECT THE DOTS". people who are predisposed to hate bush railed on him for not connecting the dots before 9/11 and so i guess you only have yourselfs to blame because thats what he did in this case, he CONNECTED THE DOTS. if you were going off after 9/11 that there was enough evidence to mandate anticipating and acting to prevent the attack then you should not be going off now because there were even more dots present in this case.
its funny how liberals act like a few thousands provisional ballots uncounted is the biggest sin in the world but refuse to admit fostering that same right in Iraq (hello they did vote not too long ago) is not a noble cause or not worth the sacrifice.
i dont even support bush but the liberals who come on these blogs are so detached from any semblance of reality i wish you guys had keep your post election promise to move to canada. go warp the fabric of that country.
and come on, seriously, "we're headed towards 1984?" get real people. that just makes americans who say that look ungrateful.
grinding poverty??? compared to how many countries on earth? and by the way in the context of katrina, i doubt all those people who were not able to evacuate had cars before bush became president. if this had happened in the 90's it would have been just as bad. and by the way its a very american idea (and a very hostile one to the environment) that the standard of being poor is whether or not you have a car in order to evacuate in the case of an emergency. so we want to stop global warming because they theoretically could cause more/stronger hurricanes but we also want to give all 300 million americans cars? there no exclusivity there. those policies are totally in step with each other. its easy to think that when your party is not the one who actually has to face the reality of compromises that substantive policy decisions normally require. if and when a true liberal becomes president and tries to fix all the problems in the world in 4 years liberals will learn an important lesson about the value and usefulness of their political ideaology. in all probability it will be the death of new school liberalism. and in about 50 years san francisco style liberalism will look as much of a folly as communism.
Posted by: | Sep 27, 2005 11:07:29 PM
I was in DC on Saturday for the MASSIVE peaceful outpouring of opposition agianst Bush and his War against Iraq.
Brent Stover is concerned about the costs of this event. I was most impressed that there were few police or officials, because the crowd was peaceful. The real issue is the costs of the Iraq War--1,920 deaths of US troops, loss of American credibility, and estimates that the total cost of the war will reach $1 trillion.
Mr. Stover--these are the real issues and the reason more than 300,000 Americans joined together in collective protest against this disastrous war.
Posted by: Judy | Sep 27, 2005 11:07:43 PM
I was in DC on Saturday for the MASSIVE peaceful outpouring of opposition agianst Bush and his War against Iraq.
Brent Stover is concerned about the costs of this event. I was most impressed that there were few police or officials, because the crowd was peaceful. The real issue is the costs of the Iraq War--1,920 deaths of US troops, loss of American credibility, and estimates that the total cost of the war will reach $1 trillion.
Mr. Stover--these are the real issues and the reason more than 300,000 Americans joined together in collective protest against this disastrous war.
Posted by: Judy Munro-Leighton | Sep 27, 2005 11:08:21 PM
These are the type of ideas put forth by liberals -- I love this exchange from Meet the Press because it shows how hapless liberalism has become. Russert asks the brilliant Maureen Dowd what she would advise the administration to do during the second term, and she (as she always, always, always does) rails about Bush and "his daddy's friends." Why? Because liberalism has no ideas.
Mr. Russert: Maureen Dowd, be counterintuitive here. Karl Rove calls you up and said, "Maureen, I've been reading your column for the last couple years. Give us advice. What should we do in the second term?"
Ms. Dowd: Well, I think, you know, given what David said, people have talked about whether the Bushes are racist, and I don't think they're racist, but their problem is about class, because they never have understood that when they have this story arc where they go down to Texas and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that that is--they think that's a true pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. They didn't accept the fact that they always have Daddy's friends to help them. And until they can see reality, then--you know, Bush's--say he's a good third- or fourth-quarter player, after Katrina. Well, that's not good enough for people who don't have Daddy's friends to help. And until he accepts that about himself, you know, he can't move on, I don't think. End Quote
Anyone can criticize -- it's the easiest thing in the world. Who has an idea that can actually make something better?
Posted by: Michael | Sep 27, 2005 11:15:02 PM
to Mr. Connect the Dots:
Do you STILL think Saddam Hussein had ANYTHING to do with terrorism or 9/11?
He was a bad guy, put into power by the US, provided biological and chemical weapons by Reagan/Bush, and protected by them, even after he had one of his Mirage F-1's put two Exocet missiles into the USS Stark, killing 47 of our navy servicemen.
Reagan/Bush, of course, did nothing, since we were supporting Saddam at the time with the Ames Strain of Anthrax from Fort Detrick, as well as chemical weapons and spy satellite photographs of the battlefield with Iran.
The conservatives have bungled us into an unnecessary war, damaged our international standing, ruined our armed forces, and racked up the biggest BAD DEBT in world history.
And Americans are starting to see it.
Posted by: george kamburoff | Sep 27, 2005 11:20:01 PM
"The Bush Cabal has defrauded us into war. That's not just an impeachable offense, it is a capital crime, and demands legal redress."
Punishable by death? Awesome! Those who support the war but haven't or cannot fight are cowards. Terrific! By your insane liberal logic, only those who are fighting the war can authorize/support the war.
I know, I know, Haliburton started the war right. Or it was Dick Cheney's BIG OIL buddies.
If only ALGORE had won.
Posted by: Brick the Gleeful | Sep 27, 2005 11:25:48 PM
I don't believe in capital punishment. We'll give Dubya the cell formerly used by John Gotti, another who seemed to share your worldview of might makes right.
The coward label I save for Bush, Cheney, Feith, Libby, Wolfowitz, and the others who are willing to send others to die needlessly, even after failing to themselves serve when we needed them.
These type have no experience with adversity nor possess any personal courage.
But they have lots of contacts and cronies, as we're finding out. That's okay, we can use that space recently freed up in Abu Grahib, (arabic for Alberto Gonzales).
Posted by: george kamburoff | Sep 27, 2005 11:33:59 PM
No one sends anyone to die. That's 60's propaganda. If war were about sending kids to die, there would be no war because NO ONE would go. It would defeat its purpose pretty quickly. Leave the propaganda alone, war is hellish enough.
Now if Bush sent Jenna and the other ditzy one or if Bush went himself and killed 32 jordanian militants in Iraq would you change your tune and support keeping the troops? Of course you wouldn't, so don't act like it matters who doesn't go. It only matters to you that anyone is there.
Posted by: Brick the Gleeful | Sep 27, 2005 11:42:21 PM
There is no propaganda here. I speak from my life experience.
If aggression is such a noble cause, why did Bush and the rest of the chickenhawks cower from the draft in the 1960's?
If they weren't sent to die, what happened to the 58,000 Americans in the Vietnam war, including some of my buddies? Most were noncombatants (technicians), like me, but died in an ignoble cause, as part of the world's most effective killing machine.
All those who support this act of aggression should be there, or their words have little credibility - only the self-serving musings of a never-was.
Political theories are great for coffeeshops, but when real people start getting killed, it's time to grow up and realize we share this Earth with about 300 other countries. You know, the ones who now hate us.
Posted by: | Sep 27, 2005 11:55:40 PM
why does everybody talk about how we supported hussein? we didnt put him in power by the way. its not relevant to the discussion of the merits of the war. its like saying if you were convinced your spouse was going to kill you that you shouldnt do anything because, "i married them". that makes no sense. if anything we more than anyone have the burden or diposing him if we (supposedly) helped put him in power.
and DID SADDAM HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH TERRORISM??? offering safe haven to terroism = having something to do with terrorism. because if no attack on the US in the last 4 years has led us to believe anything, its that when people like bin laden are on the run they become much less effective at attaining their goals. the question is (connecting the dots is about making reasonable predicitons remember) was saddam a serious candidate to collaborate in the future with terrorists. and who ever mentioned the fcat that none of the 9/11 terrorists were not from Iraq basically disqualifies themselves from any serious duscussion of terroism and how to deal with it. terroists can come form any country but what is essential for them to attain their goals is the support (safe haven and money) from heads of state. there were documented contacts between bin laden and hussien. did hussein dial the wrong number? what should we assume they were talking about? the Red Sox's chances at winning the pennent?
and as to whether hussien had anything to do with 9/11. obviously he didnt pick up the phone on 9/10 and say, "do this". but that does not mean his support in terms of safe haven and money and giving bin laden the sense that he had a reasonably power world leader covering him was not necesarry and essential to the successful carrying out of 9/11.
the dots were there, bush connected them, just like you were complaining he didnt after 9/11. and in this case many more dots were there to be connected.
Posted by: mr. connect the dots | Sep 27, 2005 11:56:28 PM
I don't want this to get too personal, so I will bow out now.
And I don't want to demonize anyone, but Dubya and his wrecking crew make it hard to refrain from such, considering what they have done to our country.
No, I would not support the war even if Dubya or Jenna "killed 32 jordanian militants", or whatever you think is groovy.
Killing for peace isn't a good idea, whether you're an Islamic suicide-bomber, or a member of the Bush administration.
These extremists need and feed on each other. And everyone else suffers.
Posted by: george kamburoff | Sep 28, 2005 12:05:08 AM
I can not imagine what hell we would endure if another country chose to fight a war in our country so they wouldn't have to fight at home. If you were an Iraqi would you believe America was fighting to give you peace and democracy when Bush justifies his war with comments like "We're fighting the terrorist there so we don't have to fight them here". It has been my personal belief that Bush wanted this war to settle a grudge against Hussain and to look better than his father. George W. Bush has raped my America. I would imagine that many of the anti-war protesters feel as I do. It's time way past time Bush answered to someone about why we invaded a country that was not bothering us, except he has no credibility left. I hope for your safe return home. You will surely have your own opinon then. respectfully
Posted by: kim | Sep 28, 2005 12:50:02 AM
yeah well while there wasnt exactly a war in iraq before we invaded saddam hussien did kill enough innocent citizens to make you think there was a war going on.
why did we invade a country that, as you say, did not bother us? well if you're worried about bush's creditbility you could just ask any number of the senators (john kerry comes to mind) who voted to give bush authority to go to war.
killing for peace isnt a good idea?? worked to free europe from the tightening grip of hitler and nazi germany.
it is so inpossible to concieve of a situation (even if saddam and iraq perhaps dont apply) where a world leader is hell bent on destruction of lives and freedom to the point where not going to war would be worse than going to war.
can people like george who posted above believe that such a situation is even possible? do they deny that such a situation could ever exist?
and sure when people go to war there lives will be forever altered and often completely destroyed in one way or another. but this is the sacrifice that the army potentially requires. and there are things at stake (and more importantly it seemed like there were things at stake before the invasion) that justify making this potential sacrifice of our soilders a reality.
Posted by: | Sep 28, 2005 2:59:05 AM
For the earlier comment that Bert was non-commital in his views of the DC protest, please re-read his last paragraph:
"I wondered what an event like this must cost. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of law enforcement officers from several different elements of local and federal agencies. Mounted police, SWAT teams, FBI agents, etc., just so Americans could have a venue to express their disdain with our leaders."
Translated: how dare you waste taxpayers' dollars to find fault with the White House. That doesn't sound very non-commital to me.
On this page, I am less concerned with the Iraq policy (Bush is clearly sticking his fingers in his ears and going "N'yah! N'yah!" to public opinion). What am I concerned about, however, is a patently phony blog which is clearly not being written by a single person. The writing style is wildly inconsistent from day to day (did anyone catch that out-of-place reference to physics in the helicopter anecdote?).
This blog has been pinballing between sappy-stupid musings about looking up old girlfriends and frat buddies to a blatant slam against people who dare to question the military's policies. Curiously absent, considering this is supposedly about the National Guard, are issues which have negatively impacted those in the National Guard, most notably the acute loss of income during an over-extended tour of duty and the blatant lack of training in fighting a guerilla war.
You guys can bash or praise Bush & Co. I am more interested in seeing where this blog is going to head in regard to contents and focus. Personally, I detect a strong piscine aroma coming from Bert's byline.
Posted by: E. Etage | Sep 28, 2005 9:48:07 AM
To Mr. Connect the Dots,
I saw a stronger connection between bin Laden and Bush than Saddam and the terrorists. I don't know where you or the President got your proof, as it certainly was debunked by the Plame affair.
If you connect the dots, do you think Mr. Bush will ever locate bin Laden? Isn't he in Pakistan, one of our allies?
When you tout that Mr. Kerry supported the war, be mindful that, like most Americans, we all were lead to believe that Iraq posed a grave danger to the US (btw, Colin Powell has since "regretted" his WMD presentation to the UN). Also, Saddam's military was degraded and boxed in. Now, into the vacuum goes every lunatic fringe group in the middle east, and they will be killing innocents for years to come. Welcome to the Jungle.
The big difference is that Kerry did not manufacture and embellish the WMD/terrorist connection and damage US credibility at home and abroad - that would be the President and his team. However, Kerry did serve in combat and asking men to die for a mistake is a terrible thing, don't you think?
If your contention is that the objective going into Iraq was to quell a Sunni insurgency (hello, mission creep) then this was not a mistake.
If the objective was to instll a democratic Iraq that would ratify a Constitution based on the Shar'ia, then this was not a mistake (truly, the will of the people might be to behead the infidels).
If the jihadists lay down their arms because we stood firm in Iraq, then this was not a mistake.
Let's fight the war in Pakistan and let's get the source of the funding in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, let's respect the limits of US military firepower and tax revenues in fighting unneccesary wars for dubious gains.
As for Mr Stover, patriotism without contemplation is zealotry. You don't fight for a country, but for it's ideals. What are those ideals? Are they diversity of opinion, or are they unquestioning loyalty and service. Will you be the tool of war, or the tool of peace? You can hold the belief that you are fighting for the protesters, but aren't the protesters also fighting for you?
Posted by: SK | Sep 28, 2005 12:50:00 PM
I'm not sure why you even bothered to observe the pathetic procession of absolute lunatics in Washington last weekend, but thanks for reporting on it.
It sounds like every other A.N.S.W.E.R. protest we have around here every six months or so. Same traveling freakshow, same anti-American, anti-semitic, pro-war (but on the other side), routine.
Seems to me that the Post should investigate the pro-North Korea, pro-Cuba, pro-Milosovich, pro-terrorist organization known as A.N.S.W.E.R., rather than reporting on a recurring, non-event.
Good luck in Iraq - I'm proud to be a Gulf War Vet and you'll find it to be a great experience.
Posted by: CDR Brian | Sep 28, 2005 4:44:33 PM
The cost associated with the rally is of no importance. Why? Because it did not "cost" any lives. That cannot be said about Iraq or any war.
Posted by: deros | Sep 28, 2005 5:56:06 PM
why isn't there more coverge? washington wizards power forward Etan Thomas gave a decisive, inspirational speech at this rally. Why does our newspaper not cover it?
it canbe read at www.edgeofsports.com article by David Zirin
Posted by: see | Sep 28, 2005 6:47:19 PM
i noticed nobody mentioned that ,old man bush not only put saddam in power and sold him weapons and gave him millions, but when osama was a "freedom fighter" in afghanistan terrorizing the russians-bush gave him money and weapons. so dumbya is just followin g in his old man's footsteps murdering lots of innocents who happen to be in the way. and by the way, the true coward is the one that blindly follows an evil leader and rationalises the murder of thousands to assuage his or her conscience.
Posted by: ultimus gimp | Sep 28, 2005 9:16:30 PM
Interesting to see that the left figured out to literally spit on the troops might hurt the election chances of the utterly worthless Democrats they're trying to elect - so now they just do it in annonymous blogs.
Bring back the spitters - at least they were honest.
Posted by: CDR Brian | Sep 29, 2005 9:07:08 AM
Here's a good story from an Iraq War Vet to counter the general lunacy here from the "anti-war" left:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/191/5641053.html Across Iraq, Americans and Iraqis are working together to reclaim the country from Baathists and terrorists. They are building or refurbishing schools, hospitals, roads and sewer systems. "The battle with the terrorists left Fallujah in rubble," says Vold. "But every day, people thanked us. 'We might have to rebuild our house,' they said, 'but you gave us back our city.' "
Do the Washington protesters know about these great strides? Vold can't say. "When I got back from Iraq, I was disappointed -- astounded, really -- to read the news. The media was saying it's all a failure, while we saw successes around us every day."
Posted by: CDR Brian | Sep 29, 2005 9:09:05 AM
Bert Stover is not a political expert or a sociologist or a journalist or an economist. Bert Stover is a National Guard officer being deployed to fight in a war that his readers may or may not agree with. If you are looking forward to reading in-depth insights or political commentary, then you are all reading the wrong section of the Washington Post because you are definitely not going to get if from Bert Stover. If you are interested in reading one man’s perspectives on the events around him whether you agree with them or not, then these articles do quite nicely. Save your long winded comments for an audience that is interested in hearing them, or read something else.
Posted by: Deuce Wang | Sep 29, 2005 12:57:44 PM
Did anyone notice that among the protesters there was a group waving the red/black 26th of July flag representative of the Castro communist revolution. I would bet that their protesting would indeed cost them their lives if they cared to protest in Cuba. They should try it!!
Posted by: Gene | Sep 29, 2005 10:54:39 PM
It's true that this article seems to be incomplete. It's the beginning of an article, really, missing it's body and conclusion.
So, for whatever reason this is, it is interesting to see how it has acted like a rorcharch blot for the unhinged passions of the bush opponents who have commented on it.
Posted by: Justin Fleming | Sep 30, 2005 9:08:51 AM
You used the word "hate" that alone says you have much to learn.
Posted by: | Oct 6, 2005 1:30:17 PM
"I saw a stronger connection between bin Laden and Bush than Saddam and the terrorists."
You're certainly not the only one.
Posted by: C | Oct 6, 2005 3:45:05 PM
I wish you Godspeed during your tour of duty.Yes there was a plethora of causes being espoused and there was great disorganization. Democratic movements tend to be untidy. I only regret that you were not present the night before, at around 10 PM, when hundreds of your countrymen joined Veterans for Peace at the Viet Nam Memorial in a candlelight Vigil. I had the singular honor of bearing the Colors at the Apex of the Wall. I was doing my best to remain composed until a group of schoolchildren came by and looked up at me and said : "Thank You Sir." This Viet Vet lost it at that point. Please do not confuse dissent with lack of patriotism. All present loved their country enough to have traveled to DC from as far away as Alaska and Hawaii. We also love and support our miltary, which is why we wish to "Bring them home NOW." This illegal war is a violation of the ill concieved "War Powers Act" which needs to be repealed in order to avoid future atrocities such as Iraq. God be with you. Hugh R. Bruce VFP Chapter 34, NYC
Posted by: Hugh R. Bruce CWO1 | Oct 8, 2005 2:27:13 PM
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Bert Stover describes his experiences as a soldier deployed. Visit www.washingtonpost.com/opinions.
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Picture This: Ben Affleck, Senator From Va.
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If you liked him as Bennifer . . . you'll love him as Benator!
That's the hot new idea being tossed around by Virginia Democrats, who are desperately searching for a big name to challenge the reelection bid of rising GOP star Sen. George Allen next year, now that outgoing Gov. Mark Warner has ducked out.
Why, who should happen to be pondering a move to Thomas Jefferson country but a certain square-jawed media magnet with a taste for liberal politics and millions to spend on it . . . Ben Affleck ! Star of "Gigli" and the J.Lo tab romance, now happily settled with "Alias" star Jennifer Garner .
The couple, expecting their first child, have been shopping for real estate around Charlottesville. British tabloids claim it's a done deal; we will only go so far as to report that they checked out at least one country estate a few weeks ago.
It was about that time that party officials started batting Affleck's name around. "It's spread pretty widely, at least in the political underground," University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato, Virginia's premier pundit, told Michael Shear, The Post's Richmond correspondent.
Another name on the wish list: blockbuster legal-thriller writer John Grisham . But the central Virginia farmhouse owner, who gives generously to Democrats and did a stint in the Mississippi legislature, has brushed off past overtures, sources say.
In truth, the Dems are less concerned with beating Allen than slowing him down. Both he and Warner are eyeing the 2008 presidential race.
Affleck spokesman Ken Sunshine said the rumors are baseless, though "he would be a superb candidate for public office in the future. Right now, he's very busy directing his first feature movie for Disney, 'Gone, Baby, Gone.' "
'The Amazing Race' Family With the Million-Dollar Look
On your mark, get set, go! The Black family of Woodbridge: Reggie, 42; Kenneth, 11; Austin, 8; and Kimberly, 40.(CBS)If the suits at CBS know what is right and good for business, they will make sure the Black family of Woodbridge wins this season's edition of "The Amazing Race," premiering tonight.
Oh. Whoops, our bad. Forgot it's a "reality" show. Whatever: These folks have the stuff unscripted stars are made of: A signature look (matching red, white and blue tie-dye), a groovy hobby (they all do taekwondo together!), magnificent cheekbones. Of all the family groups who competed in the bickerfest round-the-world race taped this summer, they traveled with the youngest children -- Kenneth , 11, and Austin , 8.
Totally adorable. Cannot wait for them to start fighting!
A two-teacher family -- Reggie , 42, teaches math at West Potomac High; Kimberly , 40, teaches fifth grade at Alexandria's Douglas MacArthur Elementary -- the Blacks could probably use the $1 million prize. But under a contractual vow of silence, they declined to comment, so we pestered the neighbors.
So . . . anything new with the Blacks? Like, a new Bentley in the driveway?
"They're doing things just like normal," said Wendy Labenow from next door.
Oh, come on! Little kids are able to keep a million-dollar secret?
"You'd be surprised," Labenow said. "They are very mature young men."
Hey, Isn't That . . .?
Jenna Bush , with a young man, checking into the spa at Four Seasons over the weekend for massage appointments . . .
Rep . Jesse L. Jackson Jr. at the Congressional Black Caucus Spouses fashion show, showing off a newly slim physique in a tight-fitting Simon Cowell -style black T-shirt . . .
Diddy at a CBC after-party at Love in a gray velvet blazer and jeans. Girlfriend Kim Porter dazzled in gold and rhinestone cowboy boots.
This Just In . . .
· First lady Laura Bush will scream " MOVE THAT BUS " this morning in Biloxi, Miss. Okay, probably not. But she will tape an episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" at the Biloxi Community Center, where she'll meet with Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The episode will air in December.
· Want to breathe the same air as Nicole Kidman for a day or two? Producers of her new movie "The Visiting," filming here and in Baltimore for the next 45 days, are looking for extras. To try out, show up at 10 a.m. Saturday at One Judiciary Square with résumé, recent photo and a pen.
· Hitched: Sen. Ron Wyden , 56, and Nancy Bass , 44, co-owner of New York's legendary Strand bookstore. This is the second marriage for the Oregon Democrat, the first for Bass. The two were set up by friends last year when Bass visited Portland to check out the city's famed Powell's City of Books -- and yes, they book-browsed on their first date. Saturday's private ceremony was held in Cannon Beach, Ore.
· Reportedly hitched: Maybe it's true love. Maybe it's the coolest "Punk'd" stunt ever . Lacking any official confirmation, let's just say actress Demi Moore , 42, and actor Ashton Kutcher , 27, got married Saturday in Hollywood, according to People magazine and Us Weekly. Moore's ex, Bruce Willis, and their three daughters attended the "traditional Kabbalah" ceremony. This is Moore's third marriage and Kutcher's first.
The Reliable Source is back and double the fun with two new gossips. We will appear Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday. Got dish? Zip it to reliablesource@washpost.com .
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If you liked him as Bennifer . . . you'll love him as Benator! If the suits at CBS know what is right and good for business, they will make sure the Black family of Woodbridge wins this season's edition of "The Amazing Race," premiering tonight. Jenna Bush , with a young man, checking into the......
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CPB Taps Two GOP Conservatives for Top Posts
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A leading Republican donor and fundraiser was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday, tightening conservative control over the agency that oversees National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
Cheryl F. Halpern, a New Jersey lawyer and real estate developer, won approval from the CPB's board. She succeeds a close board ally, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who stirred controversy earlier this year by contending that public broadcasting favors liberal views. Tomlinson's term as chairman had expired, but he will remain a member of the board.
The board also elected another conservative, Gay Hart Gaines, as its vice chairman. Gaines, an interior decorator by training, was a charter member and a chairman of GOPAC, a Republican fundraising group that then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) used to engineer the GOP takeover of the House in 1994.
With the changes, conservatives with close ties to the Bush administration have assumed control of every important position at the agency, which distributes about $400 million in federal funds to noncommercial radio and TV stations and is supposed to act as a buffer against outside political influence.
Gaines succeeds the CPB's highest-ranking Democrat, Frank Cruz. Her election came after the agency's board, which is dominated by Republicans, rejected a bid for the vice chairmanship by its lone independent member, Beth Courtney.
In June, the board named former Republican National Committee co-chairman Patricia Harrison as the CPB's president and chief executive, angering Democrats.
"It's mind-boggling," Ernest J. Wilson II, one of two Democrats on the eight-member board, said in an interview. "They had an opportunity to send a bipartisan signal. They took the opportunity to send a very different kind of signal."
Halpern and her husband, Fred, have for years been financial supporters of Republican candidates, including President Bush and Republican Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Conrad Burns (Mont.) and Christopher Bond (Mo.). Mother Jones magazine ranked the Halperns among the nation's top 100 "hard" money donors (contributions made directly to candidates, not party organizations) during the 2004 election cycle, estimating their contributions at $81,800.
She has in the past been critical of NPR's reporting on the Middle East, particularly its coverage of the Israeli government. During her confirmation hearings for a seat on the CPB board in 2003, Halpern suggested that CPB members should have the authority to penalize public broadcasting journalists who air biased programs. When she was a member of the federal agency that oversees Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, she said during her confirmation hearing, "We were able to remove physically somebody who had engaged in editorialization of the news."
In a brief interview yesterday, Halpern declined to express her personal views about bias in public broadcasting. But she said, "We will not be intervening in programming." Allegations of slanted programming, she said, will be referred to the CPB's ombudsmen for review.
In contrast to Tomlinson, CPB's two ombudsmen, Ken Bode and William Schulz, have found no evidence of liberal bias after five months on the job. Instead, they have mostly offered praise in the few reports each has issued since Tomlinson created their positions, which pay each of them $50,000 a year for part-time work. In a report issued Sept. 1, for example, Bode observed: "My own conclusion is no different than my perception of PBS and NPR when I accepted the position of ombudsman in April -- that considerations of fair and balanced is not as big a problem here as elsewhere. This is not Fox News."
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A leading Republican donor and fundraiser was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday, tightening conservative control over the agency that oversees National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
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Geena Davis Sweeps Up the Oval Office
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Geena Davis can veto my legislation anytime. Starring as the first woman to hold the highest office in the land, Davis reminds us what we have missed in most of our past, real-life presidents: cuteness. She's got a twinkle in her eye, a twinkle in her smile, a twinkle everywhere. She's President Twinkle -- just what we need to tame the extreme, charm the militant, inspire the troops.
Unfortunately, "Commander in Chief," the new ABC drama series premiering at 9 tonight on Channel 7, never gets much beyond its gimmicky premise, and that results in a good deal of wasted time. Can you imagine?! A woman as president of the United States?! Well, yes, we can imagine it, so let's get on with some good stories and knotty controversies and horns of dilemmas.
Rod Lurie, the one-time critic who wrote, directed and executive-produced the series pilot, spends too much time being slack-jawed in amazement at what has jiggled its way out of his word processor. But pilot episodes are of necessity given over to setting the rules and parameters and such. The fact is, "Commander in Chief" starts out a little too bland but still tantalizing, and Davis is the tantalizer all sublime. Maybe the presidency should be a beauty pageant; it's hard to imagine that the results would really be that much worse than we get already.
Davis is bountiful, beautiful, believable. You can accept that maybe, under the right set of quixotic circumstances, she might ascend to the position of leader of the free world. She certainly does wear more lipstick than any of her predecessors. Sometimes she boasts such a big bold blob of red that she looks like she's wearing those red wax lips they sell for Halloween.
But when she gets tough, she's formidable, even if "the issues" in the pilot are not exactly earth-shaking. Chief among them is the case of a young woman in Nigeria who, by local custom, is to be buried up to her neck in sand and stoned to death for the crime of having sex and giving birth before marriage.
Maybe such things really happen, but by leading off the series with it, Lurie suggests that the show won't be about a female president and her problems of adjustment but instead about a myopic busybody who sees herself as a feminist first and leader of the people second (or third). The president leads the Nigerian ambassador into a meeting of the Joint Chiefs and shows him how many ships can be relocated in a matter of moments to rescue the poor young woman. A general says, "There should be [only] limited loss of life."
Take that, Nigerian reactionaries! Meanwhile, there's no specific mention of all the other crises raging throughout the world as the president takes office. We are told that Davis's character, a professor at the University of Richmond, is an expert on Mideast affairs, but she certainly doesn't get a chance to show off.
You can probably guess a likely source of comic relief: The White House is set up to accommodate a president and a first lady. When for the first time the first lady is a man, it does create a new set of problems. Kyle Secor has a good time in the role, making sure the character keeps his dignity.
One thing about dignity, though: It isn't very entertaining. Lurie and company may have approached this project with a bit too much awe. People never shout or lose their tempers, even though the new president has a bona fide, hard-core, dyed-in-the-wool enemy played with sly, smug malice aforethought by Donald Sutherland. He's Nathan (rhymes, almost, with Satan) Templeton, speaker of the House and the man who would be king or, failing that, successor to his old friend the president, who dropped dead. If only the vice president weren't in the way.
In the opening scenes, we learn that President Bridges (Will Lyman), halfway through his first term, has suffered a bleeding aneurysm in his brain. Regaining consciousness, he asks Vice President Mackenzie Spenser Allen (Davis) to resign so that Templeton, politically like-minded, can succeed him. She's about to do it -- even writes a speech on yellow legal paper -- then movingly reconsiders.
"I will not resign until you do," President Bridges tells her, but it turns out he has no choice, summoned eventually to that big Oval Office in the sky. The new president meets with Templeton and scoffs at his crusty, cobwebby ideas, referring sarcastically to "that whole once-a-month, will-she-or-won't-she press the button thing." Davis handles the sarcasm deftly. As vice president, "I wasn't Gore, I wasn't Cheney," she says, but it's not yet clear just what she means by that.
The president and First Manny have two children -- a teenage son (who was a high school wrestler in a previous version of the pilot but now has morphed into a track star) and a stuck-up little snip of a daughter, so disloyal that she advises her own mother to resign when asked to because the daughter would rather see Pat Buchanan as president. This kid could be a very irritating problem.
Maybe we already have too many artificial presidents in prime-time series, stretching the limits of credibility beyond even the usual television standards. But if other fake presidents fall by the wayside, Davis deserves to hang around. Her presidency can't help being a statement, and it's already clear that as president she is going to do the job first and worry about history's verdicts second. One can sense the intense and particular pressure that would accompany such a transformation, and Davis imparts that with subtlety and smarts.
We could do a lot worse than have Geena Davis serving as president of the United States. Indeed, we already have.
Commander in Chief (60 minutes) airs tonight at 9 on Channel 7.
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Geena Davis can veto my legislation anytime. Starring as the first woman to hold the highest office in the land, Davis reminds us what we have missed in most of our past, real-life presidents: cuteness. She's got a twinkle in her eye, a twinkle in her smile, a twinkle everywhere. She's President...
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ABC's 'Desperate' Measure: 28 Million Plus
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The desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane handed ABC nearly 7 million more viewers Sunday night than did their unveiling a year ago -- and 36 percent more young adult viewers -- resulting in ABC's best fall-season debut in nine years.
"Desperate Housewives" attracted more than 28 million people at 9 p.m. That appears to be more than double the audience of its nearest competitor, though second-place CBS's 50-minute-ish football overrun played havoc with early national numbers for that network on Sunday night.
"DH" handily won its time period in the 18-to-49 group advertisers covet; it also won the hour among 25-to-54-year-olds, teens, kids and people 50 and up. (Among kids 2 to 11, "Desperate Housewives" tied Fox's animated "Family Guy" and "American Dad," according to the early stats.)
It was, in fact, the second biggest "Desperate Housewives" audience ever -- behind only May's cliffhanger season finale, which clocked just over 30 million viewers.
Meanwhile, it appears that Martha Stewart couldn't get arrested in any way, shape or form last week in prime time. Not only did her edition of "The Apprentice" open poorly on Wednesday, attracting about 7 million viewers, but CBS's Stewart flick, "Martha Behind Bars," also seems to have attracted about 7 million viewers. It would appear that around 7 million watchers of prime-time TV are very interested in seeing Martha TV; the rest of us -- not so much.
Now, on to the more pressing question of whether dead people skew younger than God.
Back in May, when Leslie Moonves, head of all things CBS, was asked whether he thought his new "Ghost Whisperers," starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a chick who talks to dead people, would attract more 18-to-49-year-old viewers than the drama it was replacing, "Joan of Arcadia," a show about a teenager who talks to God, Moonves said he thought dead people skewed younger than God. It was the best line of the entire week in which the broadcast networks all trotted out their fall lineups.
Last Friday, the premiere of "Ghost Whisperers" clocked 11.3 million viewers. It easily won its 8 p.m. time slot and was, in fact, Friday's most watched program. "Joan of Arcadia," when it premiered in September '03, attracted 13.5 million viewers, but its second-season debut plunged to 8.5 million.
Among the country's 18-to-49 viewers to whom the reporter was referring in the question, Hewitt snared 3 percent in her CBS premiere. This is lots better than the second-season debut of "Joan" last fall, which attracted 2.4 percent of the viewers in that age bracket, but not as good as the 3.7 percent "Joan" had bagged in her premiere in the fall of '03.
Unfortunately, as happens so often in life, it appears that early results are inconclusive re God, dead people and younger viewers.
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The desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane handed ABC nearly 7 million more viewers Sunday night than did their unveiling a year ago -- and 36 percent more young adult viewers -- resulting in ABC's best fall-season debut in nine years.
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Snip and Tuck
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When you are considering a vasectomy, you tend to mention it to other people to get their reaction.
You don't do this to actually get their opinion, of course. You do this to sound it out, to get used to the idea yourself. After all, the doctor is going to be messing around, you know, down there with surgical tools. You don't want to go into this unconvinced it's the best thing. So you ask around.
When you do, you hear a lot of euphemisms for the procedure. The most common one is "snip," as in, "Oh, so you're going to get snipped." This is comforting; it sounds like something you do to a loose thread, or a hair that's sprouted from your nose.
The problem is, nobody tells you that the procedure essentially involves not a mere snip, but the withdrawal of sensitive tissues from your scrotum, cutting them so they can no longer carry sperm from your testicles to outside, burning their ends with a searing tool, and then sticking them back inside and sewing everything back up.
Perhaps this is for the best.
Vasectomy Joke No. 1: A guy wakes up from a vasectomy and the doctor tells him he has good news and bad news. "The good news is we were able to save your testicles. The bad news is they're under your pillow."
The idea to get a vasectomy was mine, actually. It dawned on me two years ago that my children -- then 8 and 6 and now 10 and 7 (he's falling behind!) -- were wearing me out and that any additional siblings could send me to a very early grave.
I'm an at-home father with a penchant for keeping the kids active. That wasn't such a challenge when their idea of activity was watching "DragonTales," but now that they're fully immersed in the juvenile-sports-and-arts industrial complex, there's a lot of driving around and playing catch involved, not to mention increasingly difficult homework.
The idea of having again to change diapers and training pants (not mine, theirs) for years -- and reassemble the world's most complex crib -- did not warm my heart. In fact, it made my blood run cold.
But every time I'd mention getting neutered, my 39-forever wife would get a wistful look in her eye and gaze off into the near distance and say, "Not yet. I think there may be another little miracle waiting to happen between us."
So it was to my infinite delight that one day a few months ago my wife announced she was going off the pill and, basically, should I ever want to get extra friendly again, it would be my turn to shoulder the burden of contraception.
I was all too happy to oblige. So I started asking around.
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When you are considering a vasectomy, you tend to mention it to other people to get their reaction. Throughout the ages, vasectomies have been performed, along with castrations, as punishment. Any vasectomy is preceded days or weeks earlier by a conference with the doctor who will do the... When......
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A Good Age for Yoga
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The first sign of trouble came when Tao Porchon-Lynch, the 87-year-old yoga teacher whom Results the Gym on Capitol Hill flew in last week from Manhattan, showed up for class wearing stretch slacks, a slinky top and strappy three-inch heels.
Porchon-Lynch then kicked off her shoes and -- after surveying class members for injuries (more than a few had shoulder, foot, wrist and back issues) -- guided them through a few gentle warm-up stretches and standing postures such as Warrior, Down Dog and Half Moon.
Once most students were weary and damp, Porchon-Lynch gave them what they came for: a demonstration of what a lifelong student of yoga pushing 90 can do.
Catlike, she crouched and without a quaver balanced her body's weight on her hands while suspending her torso and legs above the ground in Mayurasana (peacock pose), one of yoga's gravity-defying power moves. Then, in one flowing motion, she swung her legs around in front and took a seat on the mat.
She finished her show with a graceful twist, bracing her left elbow over her right knee, looking over her right shoulder and rotating her torso nearly 180 degrees.
"How do you think I got to be 87?" she asked. "By doing twists."
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.
While Porchon-Lynch has the lithe physique you'd expect from someone who's been practicing yoga since childhood, her flexibility and strength -- greater than most people will ever achieve -- speak to a more than casual apprenticeship.
She was one of the first women to study under Indian master B.K.S. Iyengar, credited with popularizing yoga in the West. Results yoga director Rozann Stayden, a former gymnast who has studied yoga for 20 years here and abroad, said she invited Porchon-Lynch so her own students could appreciate the agelessness of mastery.
"People are very intrigued by the idea that yoga can be done at any age," said Stayden. "The fact that Tao is 87 and is a yoga master, people were just really interested in seeing her."
As a discipline, yoga is thousands of years old. But recent market research suggests the Eastern practice of controlled breathing, stretching and meditation is coming of age in the United States. A 2004 Harris poll commissioned by Yoga Journal estimated that 7.5 percent of U.S. adults -- some 16.5 million people -- practice yoga, up 43 percent from 2002. An even larger group was seen as intending to try yoga within the next 12 months. Last year Americans spent $3 billion on yoga classes and related products such as clothing, books, DVDs and yoga-centric vacations, the poll found.
In the Washington area, storefront yoga studios have proliferated while virtually all local gym chains offer yoga classes. Tickets to an Oct. 18 Iyengar lecture in Washington sold out months in advance at nearly $50 a pop.
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The first sign of trouble came when Tao Porchon-Lynch, the 87-year-old yoga teacher whom Results the Gym on Capitol Hill flew in last week from Manhattan, showed up for class wearing stretch slacks, a slinky top and strappy three-inch heels.
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White House Sidewalk Protest Leads to Arrest of About 370
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About 370 antiwar demonstrators were arrested yesterday after planting themselves on the sidewalk in front of the White House, a protest that stretched out for nearly five hours as police removed them in stages to avoid a backlog at a processing center.
The demonstrators, who had stayed in Washington after Saturday's antiwar rally and march past the White House, were carted away in Metro buses and police vans. Fingerprinting and booking continued late into the evening at a U.S. Park Police operations facility in Anacostia.
Those arrested were charged with demonstrating without a permit, a misdemeanor that carries a $50 fine and -- like a traffic ticket -- can be paid by mail or challenged later in court, said Sgt. Scott Fear, a Park Police spokesman.
In an action that they had planned several weeks ago and discussed with police, the demonstrators went to the White House gate on Pennsylvania Avenue NW about 12:30 p.m. and tried to deliver to President Bush the names of all the soldiers and civilians killed in Iraq. When the president did not meet with them, they sat down for their protest.
With bullhorns and hoarse voices, they yelled at the executive mansion, asking whether the president was peeking from behind a curtain or hearing them at all.
"You are a coward! You didn't meet us in Crawford; come meet us now," said Beatriz Saldivar of Fort Worth, whose nephew, Army Sgt. Daniel Torres, was killed in action nearly eight months ago during his second tour in Iraq. In August, Saldivar had joined antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan during a protest outside the president's Texas ranch, when Sheehan had asked to talk with Bush about the death of her son, Casey Sheehan, in Iraq.
Cindy Sheehan, who was among the demonstrators yesterday, was the first to be taken into police custody. She smiled at the crowd when police lifted her from the sidewalk and escorted her to a van.
At his daily news briefing yesterday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush is "very much aware" of the past few days of protests and "recognizes that there are differences of opinion" on the Iraq war.
"It's the right of the American people to peacefully express their views. And that's what you're seeing here in Washington, D.C.," McClellan said. "They're well-intentioned, but the president strongly believes that withdrawing . . . would make us less safe and make the world more dangerous."
The group arrested yesterday was led by a coalition of religious leaders. They were joined by anarchists, military families, Iraq war veterans and political activists of various stripes.
"Only people can stop the war," said Laura Linder, 44, of Chicago. She was wearing a red, white and blue bandanna and a Plexiglas hockey mask, and her hands were trembling. She said that the weekend's protests were the first she had attended and that she had never been arrested. "I'm afraid of getting my face bashed in."
But the relationship between police and protesters was placid, even jovial at times.
The crowd had headed for the White House with signs, chants and guitars. Four monks kept time with drums and a gong. Half a dozen women pulled off their shirts, standing topless with signs that read, "Breasts, Not Bombs!"
In front of the White House, however, the chants and songs grew quieter as the remaining protesters wilted in the humid afternoon.
Earlier in the day, 41 protesters were arrested about 6:30 a.m. at two entrances to the Pentagon and charged with disorderly conduct, said Maj. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman. They were all released and given court dates, Vician said.
Frida Berrigan, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who organized the protest, said the demonstrators unfurled signs that read "War is Terrorism" and blocked workers' access to the building.
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Police arrested Cindy Sheehan today outside the White House when she refused to move along the pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue.
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GOP Leaders Try to Soothe Conservatives
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Squeezed between a conservative clamor for spending cuts and the rising cost of hurricane relief, Republican congressional leaders will respond this week with a public relations offensive to win over angry conservatives -- but no substantive changes in budget policy.
Republican lawmakers and leadership aides conceded that the wholesale budget cuts envisioned by House conservatives are not being contemplated; the Senate is moving toward approving a temporary expansion of Medicaid for hurricane survivors, estimated to cost $9 billion. Nor are GOP leaders considering tax increases.
And Hurricane Rita's blow to a politically sensitive region of Texas could add more pressure to spend.
"Many communities, faith-based entities and the state of Texas have drained assets to save lives and help with the enormous multi-state national emergency, and they will need reimbursement to avoid massive financial failures," warned Rep. Louie Gohmert, a freshman Republican whose hard-hit East Texas district was drawn with the help of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) to take it from Democratic control.
Since Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, Congress has approved spending bills and tax cuts worth nearly $71 billion. An additional $5 billion in housing, education and small-business assistance cleared the Senate, even before the Medicaid bill was considered. A united Louisiana congressional delegation is seeking $250 billion more.
Republican leaders say the overall cost could be $100 billion to $200 billion. Although mindful of criticism, the leaders contend that such one-time expenditures -- albeit huge -- should not harm deficit-reduction efforts.
Prodded by conservatives, President Bush and GOP leaders have said they are willing to offset those costs with spending cuts. But realistically, the political will does not exist to vote through the cuts that have been proposed, said House leadership aides and sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Nor have Republican leaders given serious thought to reversing course on tax cuts, lawmakers said yesterday.
"I don't see any change in fiscal policy," said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a former vice chairman of the Budget Committee.
The leadership has, however, felt the political sting of the recent deficit spending, which began with huge new transportation and energy bills this summer and cascaded into debt-financed hurricane relief this month. Republican leaders plan appearances this week on the syndicated radio talk shows of conservatives Sean Hannity, Tony Snow, Mike Gallagher and Lars Larson, as well as local radio and television shows, leadership aides said. DeLay set the tone in a Washington Times opinion piece yesterday.
"It is clear that the recent political discussion focusing on the government's spending priorities and overall economic platform in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita has introduced a valuable forum to promote the triumph of our ideas and solutions for government over the crumbling and outdated policies of the Democrat-controlled Congresses of past decades," he wrote.
In private meetings last week, GOP leaders sharply criticized rank-and-file Republicans for taking issue with the surge in spending, pleading instead for unity. But neither the public relations offensive nor the private upbraiding has quieted conservatives.
"This leadership group is so out of touch, it's unbelievable," said one House lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid inflaming leaders further.
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Squeezed between a conservative clamor for spending cuts and the rising cost of hurricane relief, Republican congressional leaders will respond this week with a public relations offensive, but no substantive changes in budget policy.
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Protestants Doubt IRA Disarmament
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BELFAST, Sept. 26 -- Protestant politicians on Monday discounted official reports of a full disarmament by the Irish Republican Army, saying they wanted detailed proof before moving to reenter a power-sharing government with the British province's Catholic community.
"Today was to be the day when the gun was to be finally taken out of Irish politics," said Ian Paisley, 79, leader of the Democratic Unionists, Northern Ireland's largest Protestant political party. He condemned the lack of photographs and full listing of the quantity and type of weapons destroyed.
Paisley spoke after the head of an international commission announced in Belfast that the IRA's arsenal had been rendered "permanently unusable" in an operation witnessed by a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister.
Catholic leaders and the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland called it a historic breakthrough that could bring a final close to more than three decades of sectarian conflict that has claimed about 3,600 lives.
Officials in Britain and Ireland said they hoped the announcement would lead to the reinstatement of a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, bringing together parties representing Paisley's unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain under British rule, and Sinn Fein's republicans, who want the province to be part of the Republic of Ireland.
Mitchel McLaughlin, an official of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, said he hoped the disarmament would prove "a defining and, hopefully, a liberating moment" that would promote "confidence and generosity in response from our opponents." But Paisley said the lack of detail "illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty" of the IRA and the British and Irish governments.
Analysts said that without Protestant acceptance that the IRA had given up its weapons, lasting peace in the province would be difficult to attain. Many Protestants in Northern Ireland believe they have been abandoned by a British government that has been too willing to make concessions to the IRA in return for the promise of peace.
Several Protestant paramilitary groups still operate in the province, and they, along with potential breakaway IRA factions that are angry about the disarmament, could continue as violent and destabilizing forces, analysts said.
"The North can be a deceptive place; it is not a done deal" that Paisley and other Protestant leaders will accept the disarmament, said Tim Pat Coogan, a historian and author who has written extensively about the IRA.
In 1998, leaders of the two communities reached a peace deal known as the Good Friday agreement. Failure of the IRA to fully disarm in subsequent years was viewed in the Protestant community as the main obstacle to full implementation of the accord. Because of the political deadlock, the province has been ruled from London since 2002.
In July, the IRA announced that it would get rid of all its weapons, and Monday's announcement was the follow-through to that. Many details of the disarmament were not disclosed, such as how guns were destroyed, the number of tons of explosives disposed of and where the weapons had been hidden. Many analysts have speculated that they were buried in bogs and hillsides in the Republic of Ireland.
But Gen. John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian military chief overseeing the process known here as "decommissioning," offered the most detail yet on the IRA's stockpile, much of which was financed by supporters in the United States during the 35-year armed conflict.
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The Irish Republican Army has scrapped its vast arsenal of guns and explosives in a landmark step toward ending more than three decades of political and religious violence in Northern Ireland, according to the independent weapons inspection commission.
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Lean Plate Club
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Welcome to The Lean Plate Club, hosted by Washington Post health and nutrition writer Sally Squires. Share your tips on healthy recipes, meal plans, sugar alternatives and resisting overeating with other readers.
On Tuesdays at 1 p.m. ET, Sally, who has a master's degree in nutrition from Columbia University, leads a lively discussion for readers looking for new ways to eat smarter and move around more throughout the day. The Lean Plate Club is dedicated to healthy living -- whether you're trying to whittle your waistline or simply maintain it.
We want to hear your tips, strategies, meal plans, successes, setbacks and more. Of course Sally will be happy to answer questions and turn others over to the Club. None of this, however, is a substitute for medical advice.
Squires is a veteran health reporter for The Washington Post. She is co-author of "The Stoplight Diet for Children" and author of the upcoming "Secrets of the Lean Plate Club" (St. Martin's Press; 2006).
Sign up for the free Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter . The Lean Plate Club column appears weekly in the Washington Post Health section and is nationally syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group .
Sally Squires: Welcome to the Lean Plate Club. We've got eggs--scrambled,fried, over easy, hardboiled, soft boiled--and yes egg substitutes too on the plate for discussion today. As well as plenty of other topics.
Today's Lean Plate Club e-mail newsletter should be hitting your electronic in-boxes now if it's not already there. In it, you will find some additional links for tracking your blood choleserol levels, what to ask your doctor about getting your blood cholesterol tested plus you'll find plenty of links to healthy recipes, a one-mile fitness test and more.
If you'd like to subscribe to this free service, just log onto www.leanplatelcub.com where you're one click away from signing up. Look for the e-mail newsletter box and just click subscribe and you should be good to go.
(If you have subscribed and don't receive your issue, please let me know at leanplateclub@washpost.com. Please put "no newsletter" in the subject line.)
Last week, I traveled to Wichita,Kansas--what a delightful city!--to speak at the annual meeting of the Kansas Public Health Association. Thanks to all for their great hospitality. I really enjoyed the visit.
The freebies this week are:
Winning By Losing: Drop the Weight, Change Your Life by Jillian Michaels, TV's Toughest Fitness Guru on television reality show, The Biggest Loser (and who also hosted a web chat here at www.washingtonpost.com yesterday)A link to that to come if you'd like to read the transcript later.
Think Thin, Be Thin by Doris Wild Helmering and Dianne Hales
The Uncle Sam Diet: The Four Week Eating Plan for a Thinner Healthier America, Based on the New USDA Dietary Guidelines by Keith Ayoob, EdD, RD, with Barbara Hoffman
You: The Owner's Manual by Michael F. Roizen, MD and Mehmet C. Oz, MD
For those who are new to the Lean Plate Club web chat, here's the deal: share a healthy food find with us. Tell us about how you fit in more physical activity every day. Divulge how you have fallen off the healthy habit wagon and pulled yourself back onto it again. Share a great tasting healthy recipe (and if it's not yours, please give credit where credit is due.) Or just come to the assistance of another Lean Plate Club member on this web chat.
Do one of those things and one of these volumes could be yours. In making this offering, please note that we are not endorsing any exercise or weight loss plan. It's merely a way to show you the wide range of information available as you seek to reach a healthier weight.
Now on to the chat.
washingtonpost.com: Discussion Transcript: Personal Trainer Jillian Michaels from "The Biggest Loser" Shares Health and Fitness Tips (Sept. 26)
Arlington, Va.: My two-year-old loves eggs. in fact he wants one every day. I scramble him one egg every morning. I feel that its ok because its a good source of protein, but my husband thinks I should only give him eggs twice a week. What are the recommendaions for children when it comes to eggs?
Sally Squires: Same deal as for adults, Arlington. Experts recommend 300 milligrams daily for all healthy people. So that egg a day may be okay if your two year old depending on what else he or she is eating. A large egg provides 212 milligrams of cholesterol. If you're scrambling it in a nonstick pan or with healthy oil, you're not adding any more cholesterol. But if you child is getting fried foods or eating liver regularly (my guess is not!) then you may want to cut back.
Lawrence, Kan.: As a former farm gal and current carb counter I have egg(s) for breakfast every morning. Fried, poached, scrambled, etc.. Anyway is fine with me. I have no problems with high cholesterol and think that genetics and ample exercise make a huge difference!
Sally Squires: They can indeed make a huge difference, Lawrence. But just to be sure, it's also a good idea to have your blood cholesterol checked about once a year if it's already normal, more often if it's not and particularly if you've made a significant change to your diet. But you're right, there are people who respond to higher cholesterol in their diets and people who don't. You may well be one of those who doesn't. Thanks!
Brunswick, Maine: I am commenting on the egg question. I only by organic-humane-free range REAL CHICKEN eggs when I do buy them. I do not eat a lot of eggs, I am mostly vegan in my diet with minimal egg and dairy, but when I need to use eggs I make sure they are the healtiest, most humane available. I care about the treatment of the birds who have provided this staple to my diet. I think if more people would be conscious of what they are consuming they would have a much healtier view of life, in all is wonderous aspects and varieties.
Sally Squires: I do notice that the eggs we sometimes get from our farmer's market, which are also free-range, do seem to taste fresher than the standard eggs. Thanks for bringing up this point, Brunswick.
Washington, D.C.: I eat 2 eggs every day for breakfast (not prepared with any fat). My diet is basically free of high cholesterol products...I eat fruit, vegetables, rice or potato (no fat) and protein of fish, chicken,beef or tofu....do I need to be concerned that I'm eating 2 eggs per day?..I eat NO foods with flour or sugar either
Sally Squires: Depends on what your blood cholesterol levels are, DC. And you do get a little bit of cholesterol in those other animal products,although it's usually pretty low. Saturated and trans fats remains the biggest culprits for raising blood cholesterol levels. But you are outside the current U.S. recommended daily goal, so it's a wise idea if you're not already doing it to have your blood cholesterol level checked once a year or so. Hope that helps. Thanks.
Silver Spring, Md.: I love fresh eggs, but since a mild heart attack in 1989 I eat egg whites only. However if perchance the yolk breaks and part of it enters the egg white I leave it there.
Sally Squires: Very sorry to hear about that heart attack, Silver Spring, but it sounds like you have done well since then. And you're right, if one of those yolks happens to break occasionally, it's no big deal. But don't you also really enjoy the egg white omelets and scrambled eggs? I find them to be even fluffier than regular eggs and when you load them up with veggies and other good stuff, well, they're a fast food that's hard to beat.
By the way, here's my food find this week: organic broccoli slaw, found at Trader Joe's. It's basically julienned broccoli and while I didn't make traditional slaw out of it, it made great stir fry and was delicious in a frittata.
Potsdam, N.Y.: I'm doing the Atkins' Diet, which I understand has fallen out of favor. I eat 2 eggs over easy every day 7 days a week. According to your article, that is too much. I've had my cholesterol checked and it is fine. Should I cut down to 1 a day?
Sally Squires: If you've had your blood cholesterol checked and it is at a healthy level, then you're probably fine. But if this is a relatively recent switch to the Atkins approach then do get your blood cholesterol levels checked again in about six months just to be sure. Let us know how it goes, Potsdam.
Falls Church, Va.: I make a one egg omelet in the microwave with salsa made fresh with tomatoes, garlic, red onions, cilantro and jalapeî It smells wonderful and it is one more way to have an extra serving of vegetables. May add cheese if you like.
Sally Squires: That sounds delicious, Falls Church. Quick, easy, filled with good nutriton. And you could even add some fat free cheese for extra protein without extra fat. I've become a big fan of fat-free feta although last night, I made a quick wrap with fat free American cheese, black beans, salsa and jalapenos in a chile tortilla. It was delicious and ready in about three minutes tops.
Ellicott City, Md.: Question: How do you take your eggs?
Ted's Answer: I eat 4 hard boiled eggs every morning (Mondays-Fridays), but discard 3 of the 4 yolks (keep 1 yolk for the essential fatty acids).
Sally Squires: Good strategy, Ellicot City Ted! A healthy way to have your eggs and eat them too. Thanks!
I was on cholesterol meds for years. As a result I cut out eggs for the most part- I do eat egg substitute and egg whites and in fact have had a veggie omelette almost every day since I started ww in 2002. After 2 years on ww- I no longer had to take cholesterol meds. I do put whole egges in ground meat or chicken and in matzah balls and some baking- but I figure per portion I am not getting that much. The egg substitute tastes fine to me and it feels great not to have to take that medication anymore. (unfortunately I was on a high protein diet for years before and that caused my cholesterol to skyrocket) Thanks
Ladson, S.C.: Does protein value outweigh cholestrol found in eggs?
Sally Squires: As the American Heart Association notes, eggs can certainly be part of a healthy diet. The egg white has no fat at all--so it's a particularly good source of protein. I often add hard boiled egg whites to salads, etc. But there's no reason that you can't make a whole egg part of your regular fare either. They are a good, low cost source of protein, iron, lutein and other good stuff. It's all a question of moderation and what other sources of cholesterol you have enjoying. Hope that helps. Thanks.
Waunakee, Wis.: I have wonderful eggs from my own hens! Hens are easy to keep if you have just a few, and you don't need a rooster to get lovely eggs. My hens lay eggs with deep orange yolks, and I know they are high in omega-3's because they get lots of greens in their diet. Many cities and towns allow residents to keep hens as pets--check your local ordinances.
Sally Squires: Now there's an interesting idea. Actually, we do get deer near our home in DC, but don't know if city ordinances allow hens--or what the neighbors might say. There was a really interesting story in the New York Times a couple of years ago about a rooster that was found wandering the streets of Brooklyn as I recall. Food for thought, as we might say. Thanks!
EMS in Reston, VA: Hi Sally-
Here is an egg recipe that has been a hit everywhere I take it. It is easily modified--I've left out the sausage to make it vegetarian or substituted diced ham for variety. If you want it more eggy and to add flavor, I've used a small carton of the Garden Vegetable variety of Egg Beaters. Instead of spinach I've used asparagus. The original recipe was found in a magazine ad for Jimmy Dean sausage.
2 1/2 cups seasoned bread croutons
1 lb roll of sausage
1 (10 oz) can cream of mushroom soup
1 (10 oz) pkg. frozen, chopped spinach thawed and squeezed dry
1 (4 oz) can mushrooms drained/chopped
1 cup (4 oz) shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup (4 oz) shredded sharp Monterey jack cheese
Spread croutons on bottom of greased 13 by 9 baking dish. Crumble sausage into medium skillet and cook over medium heat until browned. Drain. Spread over croutons. Wisk eggs and milk in large bowl until blended. Stir in soup, spinach, mushrooms, cheeses, and mustard. Pour egg mixture over sausage and croutons. Refrigerate overnight. Preheat oven to 325-degrees F. Bake 50-55 minutes or until set. Serve hot with picante sauce on side if desired.
Sally Squires: Sounds delicious, Reston, but for those who are watching calories, fat and cholesterol, try making this with skim milk, reduced fat cheese and chicken, turkey or soy (meat substitute sausage) to keep calories in check. And those egg beaters are a good idea too. Thanks for passing this along with credit.
Washington, D.C.: I have been eating egg substitutes for at least 10 years, secure in the knowledge that i was getting the benefits of eggs without the cholesterol. eggs fill me up, especially first thing in the morning when I need a hearty breakfast.
Sally Squires: Another vote for egg subtitutes. Thanks, DC
Bethesda, Md.: Sally, I too love egg white omlettes, etc. Any idea how to use the letover yolks? Seems like a waste to see it go down the drain. My husband and dog don't seem to have cholesteral problems as I do, so could they benefit from these leftover yolks?
Sally Squires: I often feed at least one egg yolk to the dog. You can also freeze the yolks, particularly if they are hard-boiled and then use to top the dog's food for example (thawed out of course.) But I confess that I don't know the recommended cholesterol intake for canines. And you probably don't want to overload your husband with these either....
Anybody have a good suggestion for what to do with the yolks?
Richmond, Va.: I tell you Sally, you seem to be keeping an eye on me, every Tuesday's topic hit the nail on the head. For a while I thought I'd have to give up eggs, but after a bit of research, I found I could have them in moderation. My Sunday morning ritual consists of 2 fried eggs (non-stick pan w/ 1/2 pat of Smart Balance as oil), 2 toasted slices of oat bran bread w/2 tsps of polanders all fruit spread and a BIG bowl of some kind of fruit.
I've also been working on my chol for about 2 yrs, most seriously this yr since I'm only 35 and don't want to go way of the heart attack.I've lowered it from 258 (2 yrs ago) to 220 (June 2005) to 218 (Sept), so I know I'm on the right track. I've been doing 50 min cardio daily and sometimes 2x a day, trying (and I mean trying really hard) to watch my diet and I'm trying Pilates, although I can't do every move, I'm hanging in there. I've realized change doesn't come immediately, it happens slowly over time.
Oh, and I also want to thank the LPers w/the bike tips a couple back. I was a bit worried about going to a bike shop because I felt I might be "sold" on something I really didn't need. After chatting w/the staff for a while, I found something w/in my budget and something that doesn't collect cobwebs because I love to ride it!
Sally Squires: Congratulations on lowering your blood cholesterol, Richmond. You've really accomplished a lot.And so glad that advice from other LPCers on the bike helped. Enjoy the ride! Thanks for letting us know.
Baltimore, Md.: I LOVE hard boiled eggs and would enjoy finding a few new recipes. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Sally Squires: Here's one Baltimore: Take out the yolks. Fill the center with mashed avocado (or prepared guacamole). I've also filled eggs with the red pepper eggplant dip that Trader Joe's sells. Salsa is another option. You could also make a kind of curried yogurt dip and fill the eggs with that.
Other suggestions out there for creative ways to use hard-boiled eggs?
Arlington, Va.: I am confused about one of the one mile test from today's newsletter ( Americaheart.org: One Mile Fitness Test ) What if you can run a mile in much less time without getting your heart rate over 170? Does this count as high fitness? Or does the test having to be a walking test? Just wondering... thanks.
Sally Squires: That should count as high fitness, Arlington, but I'll doublecheck with American Heart to be sure. Don't know if I'll be able to reach them during the chat, but if not, will put something in next week's e-mail newsletter. Thanks.
I'm always getting the 4:00-energy slump at work. I used to grab something quick - a sugary granola bar, etc.
Now, I buy a large tub of low-fat cottage cheese and leave it in the fridge at work. Throughout the week I bring in things to mix - yogurt, fruit, low-fat granola, raisins, etc. It is the perfect late afternoon snack. My energy increases, it fills me up (but not so much that I ruin my appetite for dinner!) and I get an extra calcium serving to boot!
Sally Squires: It is a perfect way to take the edge off that late afternoon hungry and boost your energy. It's also filled with protein and as a recent study from the University of Washingto-Seattle noted, protein helps you feel full. In fact, if you're looking for more protein recipes that were used in the study, you can find a link to them at www.leanplateclub.com. By the way, study subjects who ate about 30 percent of their daily calories as protein, spontaneously decreased their intake by nearly 500 calories--and didn't feel hungry!
Falls Church, Va.: I have a question on egg substitutes. Why do some of them taste "soapy"? We like Egg Beaters, but have tried several other brands (including Lucerne and the Costco brand), and they have a funny taste to them.
Also, as for what to do with egg beaters - we use them for everything (we are vegetarian and they are a great protein source). Last night I dipped tofu in them before breading and baking in the oven - yum!
Sally Squires: I haven't tried either Costco's or Lucerne's egg substitutes. Anyone else notice a soapy taste to egg substitutes?
San Marino, Calif.: Hi Sally, one of our favorite quick breakfasts in the morning before school is to scramble a few eggs, but instead of cooking them in oil we cook them down in a generous dollop of our favorite salt-reduced tomato/vegetable pasta sauce... then dole out portions on top of a piece of whole wheat toast. my daughters sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on top and get "pizza for breakfast," and dad (me) makes his more grownup with some chopped onions on top....
Sally Squires: What a great and nutritious idea! Now that's thinking outside the cereal box. Thanks very much.
Indian Head, Md.: Can baked potatoes be stored in the fridge for a few days and reheated,
Sally Squires: If you're talking about cooked baked potatoes, absolutely. You can also freeze them and then reheat. By the way, potatoes happen to be a great source of vitamin C. Thanks.
Old Fatnarsh, Penn.: I exercise several times a week and watch what I eat. But the weight just won't come off. Any suggestions on what else I could do?
Sally Squires: Sorry to hear that, Pa. Yep, you've come to the right place. First, how long have you been doing this healthy regimen? Weight doesn't go on overnight and it doesn't come off that way either. If you can lose half a pound a week, you're doing well.
Second: exercise has many, many benefits. But it doesn't burn as many calories as most people think (unless you're training for a triathalon.) So if you've started to get active--a great move by the way--it will take some time to see that weight come off. (Walking a mile for example at a brisk pace burns about 150 calories, tops.)
Third: What are you really eating? And are your habits as good as you think they are? Only way to know that for sure is to measure what you eat and figure out if you're in caloric deficit. In other words, are you really eating less than you're burning?
Get those things right and you'll see the weight gradually come off. Let us know how it goes and good luck with your efforts. You will find lots of inspiration and support here.
Ardmore, Okla.: Sally: About eggs: At our house, we like our eggs over-easy and cooked in olive oil. Before serving, we spoon out about three-fourths of the yellow. Is this healthful? Thanks
Sally Squires: Sure. You're getting some of the yolk (and while that's rich in cholesterol, it also has protein and other healthy stuff too.) And that olive oil is fine, but remember that it has 120 calories per tablespoon, so while it's a healthy oil, you also don't want too much of a good thing. Everything in moderation, one of the mantras of the Lean Plate Club. Thanks.
Washington, D.C.: Are there any foods that speed metabolism, or is that a pipe dream?
Sally Squires: Yes, there are foods that speed metabolism....a little. Let me repeat that: a little. Protein is one. Green tea may be another. And by the way, simply eating helps boost calories. A little. This is one reason why small--emphasis on the small--meals may help boost metabolism a little too. Caffeine may also boost metabolism--again a little. But it's still best to eat less and move more if you really want to see results. Hope that helps. Thanks!
Northwest, DC: One of my breakfast favorites is an "muffin omelet" from Eating Well that combines egg beaters, turkey sausage, mushrooms and scallions baked in a muffin tin. One keeps me going in the morning, and they keep in the fridge for a week or so!
Also, I recently tried fitting in more exercise during the day by joining a group of people at my office who walk up the stairs twice a day...fifteen floors! I find that it wakes me up a little too, perfect at the 11 am/3pm blood sugar drop.
Sally Squires: Stairclimbing idea is fantastic, DC. (And the recipe sounds pretty darn good too!) Thanks much.
Arlington, Va.: Re: eggs. When I first moved to the DC area 8 years ago I was overweight and had fallen out of my workout routine. I got into a good habit of going to the gym after work almost every night, but still struggled with my diet -- until I started to eat omelettes for dinner. I use Egg Beaters, and I get the 2-cartons-to-a-package size where one carton is the equivalent of 4 eggs and only has 120 calories. I pour the whole carton into the frying pan (after spraying with cooking spray and heating it) and then add reduced-fat cheese, which brings it up to 220 calories. Then I can round out the meal with toast, fruit, juice, etc. and have a good, fast, healthy dinner. I don't eat much meat, so the Egg Beaters (and cheese) are an important source of protein for me, and I've lost 25 pounds since I started having them for dinner.
Sally Squires: Way to go Arlington! You've just given a great example of how a small change can add up big time. Thanks much for the inspiration.
Morganfield, Ky.: Not a question, just a comment/suggestion. I'm sure that this has been posted before, but if not....
My sister-in-law learned from a Weight Watchers meeting to substitute the oil and eggs in a boxed cake mix with diet drinks (one can per box). She said to use light diet drinks like Diet Sprite,7-Up in light cakes and to use dark Diet Drinks such as Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Coke in dark mixes like chocolate cake.
I tried this and was amazed at how well it worked. Not only did the cake not taste differently, but it was actually more moist. I found that this worked even better than using apple sauce. I'm not sure of the actual calories/fat saved, but considering most boxed mixes call for 1/2 cup of oil and 2-3 eggs, I would say it is considerable.
You just simply combine the mix with one can of the diet drink and bake according to directions. Now, I haven't tried this layered, so I am not sure how much it would fluff up, but it works very well as a sheet cake. I'm wondering how this would work with homemade mixes for diabetics that need a sugar substitute.
Sally Squires: That's a new one to me, although I do recall that some Jell-o recipes from my youth used to use 7-up in place of water. (Of course they didn't have diet 7-up in those days.) You also remind me that there's a cake and frosting recipe in the Keep the Healthy Beat booklet provided by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. I only discovered it this weekend, but it has about 216 calories per serving and sounds quite good. If any one has tried it, please let me know how you liked it. And thanks for the tip, Morganfield.
Because of my concerns about high cholesterol, I only eat the pourable, no cholesterol eggs. Is there another way that may also be low in cholesterol? I'm a little tired of the scrambled egg routine.
Sally Squires: Do you mean another way to eat those egg substitutes, Fairfax? If so, then you might like to try an omelet or a frittata, which is really a wonderful versatile food. You start it in the skillet. Take any leftover veggies, olives, capers, whatever you have in the 'fridge. Sautee. Then add the egg substitutes. Firm it on the stove. Then finish it in a 350 degree oven. You can make one large enough to cut into wedges for the family, or small enough to serve just you.
Rockville, Md.: Eggs are a staple in my diet and refrigerator. They make great, quick and easy dinners on nights when I don't feel like cooking.
Last night, for example, I made the most delish omelet. I used 1/2 cup egg beaters + 1 real egg. I sauted some spinach with some red onion and greek seasoning. After the eggs cooked a bit in a mixture of non-stick spray and butter (have to have the real thing!) I added the spinach mixture, roasted red peppers (from Trader Joes's in a bottle), and fat free feta cheese. I sprinkled a little fat free mozarella on top and cooked until melted, just for added drama.
I felt like I was enjoying a gourmet, hi-cal meal, without spending more than 10 minutes cooking and assembling.
I follow weight watchers maintenance since losing ~35 lbs a few years ago. Eggs as meals were part of my weight-loss success.
Sally Squires: Way to go on those 35 pounds, Rockville. And you've just provided another great example of finding moderation by using one whole egg and one egg white in that delicious sounding dinner. Thanks!
To Baltimore: In response to your posting for hard-boiled egg recipes, I love the old stand-by Stuffed, or "deviled" eggs.
Hard boil a dozen or so eggs.
Slice the eggs in half and reserve the yolks.
Mash the yolks I usually add a couple of the egg whites for good measure.
Add a couple of spoons a mayonnaise to taste.
Salt and Pepper to taste
Spoon into egg halves and garnish with paprika
You can stuff the eggs with this simple base mixture or jazz it up with one or more of the following:
lump crap meat (combined with the relish, celery and onion a personal favorite)
boiled shrimp (add to all of the above or just to the base)
fresh cooked asparagus tops (placed on top of the basic stuffed egg mixture)
By the way, if anyone knows the history of why this is called "Deviled Eggs" I would be curious to know where it came from.
Sally Squires: Yum! Thanks for helping Baltimore out.
Bethesda, Md.: Sally, as far as tips for keeping weight off, one of the best books I have read was "The Seven Secrets of Slim People." The basic idea is to really listen to your body and only eat when you are truly hungry (if you're unsure, then you are not). If you are not, and have a need to chew something, sugarless hard candy is great, as is sugarless gum. I must go through tons of it a day (not really), but it was really helped me keep the weight off (along w/regular exercise). Also - of course, portion control, and telling myself - this is NOT The Last Supper! I will eat again!
Sally Squires: Yes, very few of us are ever very far from the next meal--or snack. Sounds like a great book. Thanks for passing it along.
Reston, Va.: For the exerciser who has trouble losing weight, what worked for me was exercising more than once per day most days of the week. I did a hard workout in the morning, then yoga, pilates, weights, or a leisurely walk in the evenings. For whatever reason, that was only thing that really kickstarted my metabolism, since I was eating pretty well.
Your advice to see what he or she is REALLY eating is good, too. A food diary that includes portion sizes is essential. I found that my diet was not as healthful as I thought and made small changes, like snacking more and eating less at meals, that really helped. A babybel cheese and a ryvita or other hearty cracker in the late afternoon can really stave off the low blood sugar and prevent the predinner snacking that can add up.
Sally Squires: Sounds like you really speak from good experience Reston. Thanks for helping out.
Arlington, Va.: I am in the same situation as the previous poster about eating well and working out and not being able to lose weight. I am an average built 26 years old, who has been working out and eating well pretty consistently for the past 11 years. Over the past year or so, even though my exercise or eating hasnt changed, I have begun to gain weight. I have stepped up my exercise, cut out a lot of carbs, hired a trainer, etc, but i still constinue to gain about .5 lbs a week. I know its not muscle weight because my clothes are getting tighter! I dont know what else to do!
Sally Squires: Hmm, Arlington. That's definitely not moving the scale in the right direction. When's the last time you had a physical? If it's been a while, you might schedule another one. Have you ever been tested for thyroid problems? If not, consider asking your doctor about that too.
And while I'm sure you're eating good food, do check your portions and total amout of calories. Consider keeping really accurate food records for at least a week just to be sure that you're not experiencing calorie creep. And don't necessarily believe the number of calories that machines at the gym say you have burned. They are often not very accurate....
Let us know how it goes. Good luck with your efforts. Thanks.
MacPherson Square: Question about baking with egg substitutes - can you just make a straight substitution in any baked good? I have heard that it does not come out as fluffy. Is one brand better than the other for baked goods?
Sally Squires: Check the label of the egg substitute for guidance with this one. You can also substitute two whites for every whole egg and you may want to add a teaspoon of healthy oil for each egg not used. That does make things pretty fluffy in my experience. Other thoughts out there?
Eggs for dinner: I don't enough time most mornings to make myself eggs, but I love to make frittatas with egg whites for dinner. I use leftover vegetables and sprinkle a little cheese on top. Add soup or a salad and it's a quick filling meal. Any leftover even makes a good lunch the next day.
Also is there any limit to how many egg whites a person should eat every week?
Sally Squires: No limit on egg whites. And let's hear it for another vote for frittatas. Thanks.
Washington, D.C.: Egg whites only (I separate regular Grade A large eggs. My husband is still trying to think of a good use for all the yolks I discard). In fact, after a few years of doing so, I really dislike the yolks. Every morning I spritz my little frying pan with a quick spray of canola oil, cook some sliced onion, then add egg whites scrambled with some fat-free, lactose feee milk, a couple of jiggers of tabasco, salt & pepper. It's the best and gets me off to work with a light protein fix!
Sally Squires: We definitely have a lot of egg lovers out there today. Thanks. Sounds like a great breakfast.
Falls Church, Va.: Sally: Did you read the transcript of the chat with the trainer from the Biggest Loser? I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the show.
It was rather stunning to me to hear that the programs 'contestants' follow are vetted by a doctor and nutritionist. Then, to see that these very overweight people were sometimes subjected to doing sprints while carrying this very trainer on their back. What doctor would say ok to that?
Sally Squires: I haven't read yesterday's transcript, but I did do a column on the Biggest Loser when it came out earlier this year in its first season. Dr. David Heber, of the UCLA, was one of the doctors who helped screen the first set of contestants. He's head of a human nutrition lab at UCLA and is well respected. There was another doctor involved too. But I was troubled by the fact that during the first season at least one contestant threw up from activity. As they say in the car commercials, don't try this at home...
Mushroom Sausage Muffins: Here is the recipe I mentioned earlier. It was in the Eating Well April/May 2005 issue. I'm sure you could substitute Egg Beaters for the whole eggs to shave off some fat.
8 ounces turkey breakfast sausage, removed from casing and crumbled into small pieces
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup shredded Swiss cheese
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1. Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 325 F. Coat a nonstick muffin tin generously with cooking spray.
2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add sausage and cook until golden brown, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a bowl to cool. Add oil to the pan. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring often, until golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Transfer mushrooms to the bowl with the sausage. Let cool for 5 minutes. Stir in scallions, cheese and pepper.
3. Whisk eggs, egg whites and milk in a medium bowl. Divide the egg mixture evenly among the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle a heaping tablespoon of the sausage mixture into each cup.
4. Bake until the tops are just beginning to brown, 25 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Place a rack on top of the pan, flip it over and turn the quiches out onto the rack. Turn upright and let cool completely.
Makes 1 dozen mini quiches.
Per quiche: 90 calories; 5 g fat (2 g sat, 1 g mono); 105 mg cholesterol; 3 g carbohydrate; 9 g protein; 0 g fiber; 217 mg sodium.
Sally Squires: Thank you! And thanks as well to the folks at Eating Well magazine. You can find their website at www.eatingwell.com. They also have a wonderful cookbook.
Baked Deviled Eggs: Baked Deviled Eggs
Prepare deviled eggs. Mash yolks with sour cream, mustard and seasoning. Set aside
1/2 cup chopped green pepper
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 -4 oz. can mushrooms
Saute peppers & onions in butter. Stir in pimiento, soup, sour cream, salts, & mushrooms.
Place half of soup mixture in casserole dish, add eggs, cut-side up, in single layer. Pour rest of soup over top and sprinkle with cheese.
Bake 20 minutes at 350 or until heated through.
Let stand 5 minutes before serving
Sally Squires: Another great sounding recipe. And for those who want to cut the fat and calories a little, you might try this one with nonfat sour cream and reduced fat cheddar cheese. Thanks very much for sending this along.
Cranston, R.I.: How many eggs can the average women consume per week? Maybe I should rephrase it. For 115 pound 40+ yr old women, can she consume 2 eggs on Saturday and 2 eggs on Wed? Does it matter how it is cooked? Fried, scrambled, poached?
Sally Squires: If those are large eggs, that would be a total of 4 x 212 milligrams of cholesterol = 848 milligrams of cholesterol for the week. Since the AHA and other groups say to have 300 milligrams per day x 7 = 2,100 milligrams per week. That's well within the healthy range.
Of course, that doesn't take into account what other sources of cholesterol you may or may not be eating. But if you're not otherwise loading up on liver pate, eating pounds and pounds of shrimp or consuming lots of whole fat cheese, you're likely doing just fine. And it probably doesn't matte a whole lot what you cook those eggs in, although healthy fat--olive, canola oils, for example--are always good ideas.
Even if you have elevated blood cholesterol or diabetes or heart diseaes, you can probably have your eggs as long as you are watching other cholesterol intake. It's not one day or one meal that counts, but the overall pattern. Hope that helps. Thanks!
Eggs in DC: I think it i funny that people always think of brown eggs as being "more healthy." and that whenever you see "oranic" or "free range" eggs they are usually brown. This also means that brown eggs are usually more expensive. If given a choice between organic free range white and brown most would go for the brown.
So why is this funny.. well as most people do not realize eggs are eggs reguardless of their color. The only reason brown eggs are brown is that they come from Brown/Red chicken and white eggs come from white chickens.
Just a funny fact that most people do not know.
Sally Squires: And a great tip. Where I grew up in the midwest, brown eggs were not very readily available. (At least in those days.) So it was actually kind of a surprise when we moved to Connecticut to find brown eggs. But you're right, inside they're the same.
Healthy Egg Salad: Healthy Egg Salad
You can make a great egg salad--this also works for deviled eggs too--with hard boiled eggs. Use one yolk--or no yolks--and then substitute something else, such as avocado or guacamole--for some of the fat. And I throw in slivered olives and or pimentos as well as slivers of jalapeno peppers, celery, cherry tomatoes, etc.
Sally Squires: You can indeed do this and it will be a great meal, because I've made something similar. Thanks!
Ithaca, N.Y.: For the person who is eating well and exercising, but still gaining weight (or at least not losing): Take a closer look at the ingredients of the foods you are eating, as well as the amounts.
I had this problem before I discovered that most of the fat-free products I had come to rely on to "help" me contained high-fructose corn syrup (including fat-free half and half, fat-free salad dressings). I seem to be sensitive to it, so I try to eliminate these food items. My weight has stabilized! In place of these products, I've learned to use smaller amounts of the real thing.
Sally Squires: Good suggestion, Ithaca. Thanks for passing along the tip. Glad to know that you've been able to stabilize things. Thanks.
Washington, D.C.: Sally, I am 28 and recently found out that I have high cholesterol (265) The doctor thinks it is just genetic and said that I will most likely need to go on medication when I get older. I agree with the genetic idea as my geandmother has always had very high cholesterol and I take great care of myself. I am a healthy weight, I run and I eat a well balanced diet with whole grains, fruit, veggies, although I love red meat I rarely eat it.
So is there anything i can do to help reduce my cholesterol or is this a case where it's all genetics? It disturbs me to think that even with all my running I could still one day have a heartattack.
Sally Squires: Yes. You can add oatmeal--and other fiber--to your diet, which may help reduce your blood cholesterols. You can also try some of the plant based sterols and stanols that are now on the market in Take Control and Benecol margarine like spreads, as well as orange juice and soon other products according to a report that was presented last eek at the American College of Nutrition's annual meeting.
The "margarines" alone have been shown to help reduce blood cholesterol by about 6 percent--roughly the same amount as a drug. But do keep going back to check on your blood cholesterol. And try to look at it this way: if you end up needing to take a cholesterol lowering medication better to do that than to have a "heart event" as researchers say.
Let us know how it goes.
Shenandoah Valley, Va.: One thing I like to do for breakfast is scramble some egg-replacers with ff cottage cheese and put it in a pita. I commute to work everyday, so it's easy to eat on the go, and the ff cottage cheese pumps up the protein of eggs without adding any fat. Plus, it makes for good consistency. I also have taken to slicing bananas and putting them inbetween whole grain toast. I like it better than jam!
Sally Squires: That's a smart fast food breakfast, made at home. And if you use whole wheat pita, you can also get a fiber fix too. A win-win as we like to say here at the Lean Plate Club. Thanks much!
Washington, D.C.: Shrimp is high in cholesterol?
Sally Squires: Shrimp has cholesterol. A quarter pound has about the same amount of cholesterol as an egg yolk. But shrimp also has a lot of healthy omega-3 fatty acids. So it's all a matter of finding balance. But it's best not to eat fried shrimp--or other fried seafood-which only adds saturated and possibly trans fat depending on how it's prepared.
Arlington, Va.: Martha Stewart Everyday Food had this great recipe where to get a thick slice of bread and take out part of it making a well. Crack one egg into the well. Top with cheese and veggies, then bake until egg is cooked through. I can't ever remember the oven temps, I think 350, but I make this as a quick dinner on weekdays.
Silver Spring, Md.: Off the topic of eggs but quick, easy and very filling breakfast: I take a toasted whole grain english muffin and spread 1 or 2 T of crunchy peanut butter. Add a glass of skim milk and you are good to go until lunch. Can even eat it while putting makeup on.
Sally Squires: That's a wonderful breakfast, Silver Spring. The only thing that you might add is some fruit or a small glass of fruit or vegetable juice to make it really complete. Thanks much!
Arlington, Va.: My favorite way to enjoy eggs is how I had them in my home country of Bangladesh. It takes a little work but great for weekends. I make a rice dish called Khichoree, which is basically rice cooked with spices and lentils (is easier than it sounds). You eat this dish with an egg (either scrambled or sunny side up). Yum!
Sally Squires: That sounds really good. And those lentils add both protein, fiber and complex carbohydrates. Can you share a recipe with us? Since we're running out of time, you could e-mail me at leanplateclub@washpost.com
Nashville, Tenn.: I don't much like whole wheat pastas, either, but believe it or not there is a stone-grown whole brown RICE pasta that is very nice. We've tried other rice pastas before and they are mostly gross. This one is different.
The brand is Pasta Joy by Tinkyada. They have a Web site.
Sally Squires: Thanks for the tip Nashville. In today's LPC e-mail newsletter, there's a link to a taste test for whole wheat pasta. The chef who conducted it, didn't much like whole wheat pasta. I've just bought some of this brown rice pasta myself and look forward to trying it. Thanks again, Nashville.
Biloxi, Miss.: Hi Sally, Sorry I missed the online discussion today. Could you please answer a question for me anyway? Can you freeze potato salad, with or without eggs? Thanks
Sally Squires: You can freeze omelets and you can freeze potato salad, so I don't see why you couldn't freeze this salad. Hope that things are on the road to recovery, Biloxi.
Washington, D.C.: Sally- I've gotta be honest here- eggs totally creep me out! I can deal with them when they're cooked or baked in something, but when the egg is the main star, like in an omelet or something, it's hard for me to eat it. I get especially grossed out when I find an egg that has been fertilized but didn't come to fruition. When push comes to shove, I'll request egg whites. I suppose being a vegetarian doesn't help matters. Am I really missing out if I don't eat eggs regularly?
Sally Squires: Nope, you're not missing out at all, DC. There's no requirement to eat eggs at all.
Toronto, Ontario: Hi Sally- while I eat egg substitutes or egg whites- the kids eat eggs and one of their favourites is egg-a-bagels- toast the bagel put margarine on it and put it in the frying pan and put the egg in the hole of the bagel half and then flip over- the kids love it.
Sally Squires: Kind of sounds like a simpler Egg McMuffin. Maybe we should call it a Toronto Bagel, you know, like Buffalo Chicken Wings...Thanks!
New Carrollton, Md.: My husband loves eggs over easy. I've discovered that if I use a little butter-flavored spray -made from canola oil and little fat if used properly]and then, just as the eggs are 'gelling' I cover the frying pan and reduce the flame, the eggs come out perfectly, no broken yolk, no over-hardening, no extra fat.
Oh, and because my bread-baking recipes call for large eggs, we buy those now instead of extra-large, and no one notices a difference.
Sally Squires: And in making that change you save 11 calories with each egg and about 50 milligrams of cholesterol. Thanks.
My Eggs, My Way: Love eggs! Although I am genetically lucky enough to eat eggs more frequently, for purposes of weight-watching (I would always add a big side order of crispy bacon!) Now I scramble egg beaters with a fine shave of mozzarella.
My great side with eggs of any kind now is Canadian bacon--so flavorful and low fat!
I save real eggs, over easy, to have with a side of real bacon, and hash browns, which I now savor instead of inhale.
Sally Squires: Eggs clearly rule the day today on the chat! Thanks.
Milford, N.J.: I buy eggs from the farmer up the road from me who feed his chickens pulp from his juicer. You have never seen eggs with such orange yolks! Although I only eat about 2 or 3 eggs a week, I think they are a very healthy food and that it is your total fat intake rather than cholesterol that you need to be concerned with. I just encourage people buy humanely farmed organic eggs rather than what is cheapest. A comment on whole wheat pasta: I buy Bionaturae which is an Italian brand available at at least 2 supermarkets in my area. It is delicious and has a texture much like regular pasta. Even my husband likes it! Thanks for your columns--they're great!
Sally Squires: I knew that farmers sometimes fed their chickens fish meal to help increase the healthy fats in eggs, but never knew that they sometimes fed them pulp from the juicer! Thanks as well for the whole wheat suggestion, which for those who don't get the LPC e-mail newsletter yet is a question in today's edition. You can sign up for this free service at leanplateclub.com Thanks Milford.
Sally Squires: Wow! Thanks for a very lively chat today. Winners today are: the stuffed egg recipe supplier; Ted from Ellicott City, Morganfield, Ky., Arlington who has lost 25 pounds, Waunakee, San Marino, the supplier of the Eating Well recipe and the Arlington who is gaining 0.5 pounds per week.
E-mail me at leanplatclub@washpost.com and please put "winner" in the subject line. Be sure to include your U.S. Postal address in the message so I can send you your prize.
Until next week, eat smart and move more with the Lean Plate Club. Cheers!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Post health and nutrition writer Sally Squires talked about how to eat healthier.
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Opinion: Global Warming; Anti-War Protests
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Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was online Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 1:30 p.m. ET to discuss his recent columns on hurricanes and global warming ( Two-for-One Deals ) and the weekend's anti-war protests in Washington, D.C.( Stop, Children, What's That Sound? )
Eugene Robinson: Hi, folks. I'll be here chatting for the next hour or so, about recent columns -- antiwar protests, global warming, New Orleans and the Gulf -- or anything else you'd like to bring up. (I've spent part of the morning watching former FEMA director Michael Brown try to explain himself at a congressional hearing, and "Brownie" is sure doing a "heckuva job" putting the blame on everybody else.)
Canton, N.Y.: With hundreds of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrating around the country, why has the media barely covered the story?
Eugene Robinson: Well, I don't want to sound like a "homer," but The Post did run its story about the protest at the top of the front page, with big photos and more stories inside. I noticed that some other papers, including one big one in New York, ran the protest inside. I think that was a mistake.
Laurel, Md.: I'm curious about the coverage of the Anti-War rally in The Post. In D.C. there were anywhere from 100-150,000 anti-war demonstrators on Saturday and maybe a few hundred pro-war, pro-Bush demonstrators on Saturday and Sunday.
Why is it The Post and other media outlets insist on giving equal coverage to both sides on everything? Do 400 Pro-Bush demonstrators equal 100,000 anti-war demonstrators in the minds of the media?
Eugene Robinson: That's an interesting question, even if the premise is a bit shaky. The Post ran the big protest on the front page and the subsequent little protest on the Metro page. I think you could still argue that this was too much for a few hundred protesters, but the truth is that the coverage wasn't equal.
Cabin John, Md.: It looks like even a large protest of 100k+ gets little or no coverage in the news unless the protesters are burning cars or wrecking a Starbucks. Can we safely say that these sorts of non-violent demonstrations are no longer effective in grabbing public attention or changing public opinion?
Eugene Robinson: No, I think that mass, non-violent protest is still effective. Anyone who plans any event has to submit to the vagaries of the weather (and the news cycle), and even though this protest got pretty heavy coverage, it would have been heavier if another hurricane hadn't come along.
Centreville, Va.: The fact that you attach such huge importance to the protests helps to clarify why folks on the left are always so mystified when conservatives do well in elections. We'll be generous and say that there were actually 300,000 protestors present, although organizers always vastly inflate their numbers. That means for every 1,000 people in the United States, one showed up to protest. As far as I'm concerned, that makes the whole silly spectacle utterly insignificant. And don't be fooled by the much lower attendance of the pro-war rally; people who support the President's stance are doing such mundane things as working.
Oh, and by the way, Jesse Jackson's presence may make the protest "official" for the activist classes, but for the rest of us it only shows what a sham the whole event is, since Jackson will show up at anything to get his face on TV.
Eugene Robinson: I think that kind of ignores the traditional role that protest has played in this and other societies. When you get up into six figures, in my view, you've made a point.
Houston, Tex.: Why do we blame Bush for the actions or lack of in New Orleans? As you could see on live TV last week, the local government has the first response in a disaster and the safety of it's people. Why don't we blame Nagin? If he were White would he be to blame? Yes our evacuation wasn't perfect, but at least we did try to save as many people as we could, not just leave them there to die. I know you won't discuss this issue because it involves "the race card" but someone needs to.
Eugene Robinson: I'm happy to discuss this issue. In fact, after spending a week in flooded New Orleans, I'm obsessed with this issue. Of course the mayor and the governor could have done a better job. But what on earth do we have FEMA for? Why do we have a Department of Homeland Security? This administration has spent years now telling us we're under threat of attack -- a dirty bomb, a chemical-weapons attack -- and FEMA specifically knew that a direct hit on New Orleans by a 3-plus hurricane would be catastrophic. Where were the evacuation plans? What entity except the federal government could ever effectively manage the kind of evacuation and relief efforts that were needed in New Orleans? Believe me, even a week after the disaster, the local and state authorities were working much more effectively than the hapless feds. It was a shameful performance. We should all be ashamed.
Washington, D.C.: In today's column, you wrote: "How exactly did the unqualified Michael Brown get put in charge of such a crucial agency as the Federal Emergency Management Agency?"
Would you be surprised to know that the Democrat-controlled Senate confirmed him -unanimously- as deputy director of FEMA (Aug. 1, 2002)? (Apparently his prior confirmation made it possible to be elevated to director without another confirmation process in 2003.)
Do you, at all, blame the Democrats for not taking "advise and consent" seriously these days for anything but the abortion views of judicial nominees?
Eugene Robinson: Gee, I thought the administration was trying to claim that the Senate's advise-and-consent power was really nothing more than a formality. There would have been a hue and cry from the Republican majority if Democrats had tried to block Brown. I don't see how you can avoid assigning the responsibility to the administration that nominated him. He had been the head of the International Arabian Horse Association, for heaven's sake. As somebody pointed out, we don't know of a single Arabian horse that died in the hurricane.
San Antonio, Tex.: Kiss of death in the Bush administration: "-insert name, you're doing a heckuva job!"
How much impact--if any--do you think that former FEMA director Michael Brown's testimony on the Hill today will have? Will the buck stop there with Brownie, meaning, should there be more inquiry? Will there be more inquiry? Do you see tearing apart Katrina/Rita mistakes--and the cost of any inquiry--having any positive benefit or impact?
Also, role of the military in natural disasters, given the results are catastrophic enough to warrant additional man/woman power?
Eugene Robinson: I think Brownie's testimony will remind everyone of how outrageously unqualified he was to do a vital job. Beyond that, though, I imagine that the GOP majority on the Hill will block any kind of truly objective inquiry.
Your question about the military is a good one, and I don't really know the answer. The country has a healthy fear of seeing our troops patrolling our streets. On the other hand, some jobs are just too big for any other institution. I think there are ways of establishing a chain of command that will make us comfortable. But I thought this was the kind of thing Homeland Security was supposed to be working out.
Baltimore, Md.: Re: Mike Brown's testimony: Will anyone ask him, "Mr. Brown, why did you accept a position in the federal government for which you had no previous training or qualification?" I would like to think that if I were offered such a position like Deputy Director--and then Director--of a huge emergency management organization, I would turn it down on the grounds that, gee, I have spent my whole life in advertising and PR, so I'd better pass.
Eugene Robinson: I'd like to ask him that question myself. If someone wanted to name me chief surgeon at Georgetown Hospital, I'd be honored but I'd have to decline.
Atlanta, Ga.: Do you think the feds' painstakingly slow response to Katrina will impact the mid-term elections?
Eugene Robinson: Sure hope so.
Arlington, Va.: I read your "Two-for-One Deals" column this morning. I agree with you that the Bush administration ignores scientific data when it's convenient for them to do so. I also agree that there is a consensus on global warming. However, linking global warming and rising sea temperatures to stronger hurricanes is far from conclusive. You failed to mention criticism of the studies from NOAA. Hurricane cycles can be decades long. It's possible that we have entered a new cycle and that global warming has little or nothing to do with an increase in the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes. Another criticism of the recent studies is that they are using five-year periods to analyze this phenomenon. With such a short period of analysis, you could expect a certain amount of random fluctuation in severe hurricanes. One five-year period showing an increase in severe hurricanes can hardly be called a trend. Even with these caveats in mind, what will need to happen for Republicans to take global warming seriously?
Eugene Robinson: The writer is referring to a column that ran last Sunday, I believe, about new studies that indicate warming sea temperatures have led to more-intense hurricanes, like Katrina and Rita. I urge you to look at the studies, which were published in the journals Science and Nature. The one in Science is quite accessible and hard to quibble with. It's not just comparing one five-year period with another, it looks at a 35-year span and the trend line is steadily upwards in terms of the number of really intense, category 4 or 5 hurricanes. I found it convincing on that point.
As far as what it will take to get Republicans to pay attention to global warming, if the destruction of Trent Lott's house didn't do it, I don't know what will.
Blacksburg, Va.: One thing that really annoys me is when reporters talk about global warming by giving equal treatment to 'both sides'-- the 99.9% of scientists who believe it exists and the .1% of scientists (usually financed by the oil companies) who say it doesn't.
Are reporters so worried about bias that they distort the truth?
Eugene Robinson: There is a convention in the news business that in order to be "balanced" or "objective," it's necessary to report "both sides" of every question. The problem is, some questions have more than two sides, and some have only one. I think the tradition is valid when there is, say, a sizeable minority of scientists who dispute the majority view. That's not the case in global warming -- though there is a reasonable argument that atmospheric science is not entirely understood by anyone at present.
Princeton, N.J.: Why aren't you guys (questioners) talking about global warming? Although it has not reached the point where it affects the frequency of hurricanes, I'll bet you any tropical storm that wanders into the Gulf will become a cat 4 or 5 because of the extraordinary high temps there. I'll agree our "dull normal" president is probably doing his best when it comes to science (stem cells, natural design, etc.), but come on , folks, can't we get a smart president who at least speaks one language? And I ain't disassembling you about dat!
Eugene Robinson: That's what I worry about -- that any little garden-variety hurricane that gets in there will turn into a monster. In reality, it won't happen every single time. But after reading those new studies, I'm convinced it's going to happen a lot more frequently. If we don't take this into account in rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, we're idiots -- and we'll be sorry when all the new houses and casinos and nudie bars that we build get washed away in a few years.
Washington, D.C.: The constant reference to the Arabian Horse experience is a cheap shot. First of all, he was a lawyer, not a jockey. Second, he was originally brought into FEMA as a lawyer (general counsel), not as an experienced emergency response official. He gained that experience as part of FEMA, where he was first elevated to deputy director, and then to director. You should at least acknowledge that his real background, while not the material for a snippy sound-bite, is more extensive than a horse trainer.
Eugene Robinson: His performance speaks for itself. I saw him in action in Baton Rouge, "directing" the relief efforts, and it was not pretty. My impression was that when effective action finally got organized, it was military officers and local officials who got together and just ignored whatever the federal and state bureaucrats were saying and went out and did the job on their own initiative.
Centreville, Va.: I have a memo to the baby boomers out there: just because you see the world a certain way doesn't the mean the rest of us do. Ergo, all wars are not Vietnam. And seeing Joan Baez protesting a war might feel like old home week at the love-in to you, but the rest of us either don't know who she is or don't care, or both. It's nice that you get to feel good about how you think you stopped a war, but please, can we look to the future just a little here?
Eugene Robinson: I interrupt the disaster/global warming string to say: C'mon, don't bum us out. We boomers are approaching our dotage, and it's nice to revisit our youth. Besides, there are still an awful lot of us.
Seriously, sometimes the future does look a little like the past. It did on Saturday.
Woodbridge, Va.: Have you heard anything about some hurricane victims spending their government debit cards on $800 designer handbags? I've heard that a couple of times now. So much for my taxpayer generosity.
Eugene Robinson: I heard one report of one such purchase, but I haven't seen it pinned down and it could be apocryphal. There are always one or two exceptions, but I'm confident the evacuees are spending money on things like food, shelter and clothing.
Washington, D.C.: The NO papers are reporting that most of the claims of murder, rape and shootings were wild exaggerations. Do you think the politicians who made these claims and the media who passed these falsehoods on as the truth owe everyone an apology?
Eugene Robinson: I saw that fascinating story in the New Orleans Times Picayune (nola.com). For those who haven't, the piece reported that all those reports of murder and mayhem in the Superdome, the convention center and throughout the city were essentially wrong. The city now believes there were exactly four homicides in New Orleans the week after the flood -- which is just what New Orleans sees in an average week. There were no bodies stacked like cordwood in the Dome or the convention center. When I was in New Orleans, evacuees told me that most of the "sniping" was actually people firing their guns to try to get somebody to notice that they were still stranded on a roof or in an attic. I think the good people of New Orleans are owed an apology.
What in the world is going on?
I keep reading in editorials that there is no way to evacuate a large city.
What are we supposed to do in N.Y. or D.C. in case we need to evacuate? Take subways/metro? Hail a taxi? Are we then going to be blamed like the citizens and local leaders of Louisiana for not being prepared?
And, why aren't reporters all over local leaders in their respective areas, grilling them about emergency planning? If they have been, what has been the D.C. mayor's response to the grilling, for example?
I may sound angry, but I'm not. I am scared sheetless that some disaster strikes Manhattan while I am across the river in Jersey City, and due to poor planning I am stuck, separated from my family and without a safe place to go. The response to Katrina and Rita has scared me more than 9/11 ever did.
Eugene Robinson: I'm with you, and so are a lot of people I know. Look, I know it's hard to evacuate a major city. Houston was pretty organized in the way it tried to evacuate, and the city had four days' notice that Rita was on the way, and still there was 12-hour gridlock on the freeways. But there MUST be a better way, and if there isn't, then we have to invent one. Michael Chertoff, please, get to work on this.
New York, N.Y.: Should we do a flip? Say if Mr. Brown was African American or a person of colour. Do you think he'd be re-hired as a consultant after a disastrous performance as Undersecretary (FEMA)?
I do agree that people should be held accountable as warranted on all levels.
But it does make one wonder how many funds were misspent in DHS or directed to other priorities (and as you know in government, everything is considered a priority).
Eugene Robinson: I really wonder what DHS has been doing. Frankly, I think that under its former director, Tom Ridge, the answer is: not much. At least Chertoff has tried to impose some sense of order and priorities -- unfortunately they turned out to be the wrong priorities, or at least his list was incomplete in that it didn't include hurricanes, but I respect the effort. Now the task is clear. We have to have workable systems for evacuation and relief in major cities.
Sanibel, Fla.: NO one that I have read in the press that knows anything about storms says anything about global warming affecting the strength of the hurricanes. Read Drudge for some examples of older hurricanes and their strength. Most feel we are in a 20 something year cycle that was active in the 50s and 60s and not so active in the 70s and 80s (during your so called "global warming" increases). We are now in an active cycle again. Most places get hit every 75 to 100 years with a big one. SW Florida, Texas etc. The normal tracks are always in danger, like the northern Gulf coast. Also, I wish the news people would stop lumping all of the Gulf Coast together. It hurts our tourism on the SW Florida coast when they do that.
Eugene Robinson: Well, those two new studies I keep mentioning are by people who know a lot about storms, and they say that higher sea-surface temperatures are increasing the intensity of hurricanes. They don't say WHY the sea-surface temperatures are rising, but there are other studies that attribute this increase to global warming. Look, if there were a yearly average of 10 category 4 or 5 hurricanes anywhere in the world 30 years ago, and an average of 18 now, and the upward trend is basically a continuous line, you've got to suspect that something is going on. If you get trapped in your attic by a flood, you don't much care whether it's carbon emissions or a natural cycle.
Wilmington, N.C.: 1. Maybe with Houston's example, some may better appreciate the relative success in NO of getting 80% out in 2 days
2. The real race issue: In light of aftermath reports of relatively low confirmed acts of violence, would authorities have perceived as much threat from a largely white trapped population?
Eugene Robinson: 1. I agree.
2. No, they wouldn't have perceived the same threat.
Potomac, Md.: Are there any official data on the number of people who left New Orleans? Which neighborhoods are they from? How many intend to come back? How many have a home to come back to? It seems to me that we must know all these factors before planning the reconstruction of New Orleans.
Eugene Robinson: These are among the great unanswered questions. I know that The Post and other news organizations will be trying to answer them in the coming weeks and months. I keep remembering a group of evacuees from the Lower Ninth Ward that I met at the New Orleans airport. They were about to be flown out to San Antonio. Are they still there? Do they plan to come back? This will be a fascinating story for a long, long time.
Eugene Robinson: My time is up. Thanks for participating, and see you next time.
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Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson discusses his recent columns on the possible link between global warming and hurricanes, as well as the weekend's anti-war protests.
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Russian Chronicles: Ten Years Later
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Lisa Dickey: Hi, everyone - David and I are in Ulan Ude, just back from the farm in Galtai. Looking forward to answering your questions!
Baltimore, Md.: For some years now, I have wished to visit Russia. However, since I am wheelchair-mobile, my fear is that the historically and culturally interesting places which most tourists would like to visit would be completely inaccessible to me. Moreover, I am concerned that Russia does not even have the "vocabulary" to address access issues since resources are so limited. Could you please address if you can? Thank you.
Lisa Dickey: You are correct that in Russia, many places will be inaccessible to you. Unfortunately, Russia is not a country where very much attention has been paid to this situation. Even getting on the metro in Moscow and St. Petersburg would be very difficult, as there are stairs and escalators, but no elevators that I know of. And as far as I know, there's no real movement to change that. Wish I could offer a more optimistic outlook!
Harrisburg, Pa.: What are the attitudes towards America that you found among Russians? Are there generational differences, perhaps among older Russians who grew up fearing Americans and younger Russians who have learned more about our culture?
Lisa Dickey: For the most part, we've been greeted with curiosity more than anything. I've been surprised that, ten years later, I feel MORE exotic as an American than I did in 1995. Honestly, in Birobidzhan and Chita, it felt like we each had three heads or something -- people just looked at us with very open curiosity, practically staring at us. I wouldn't have thought that Americans would be such a rarity these days, especially since there are so many Americans adopting Russian babies and children now. But that's the response we've gotten so far.
Washington, D.C.: Siberians are proud people and sometimes feel neglected by Moscow. How do Siberians feel about Putin and Moscow now?
Lisa Dickey: We've gotten the whole gamut of responses when we've asked people about Putin. Many have told us that he's exactly what the country needs -- a strong leader who doesn't bend to anyone else's will. Others feel like he's too dictatorial. We've had some who've told us that, although his tendencies were dictatorial, that's exactly what Russia needs. Many seem to think that Russia could not survive with the kind of absolute freedom they believe Americans live under. 'We're different people from you,' they tell us.
The jury's still out on Putin, I think. He's been in power for five years, but it's of course difficult to tell what he's responsible for, in terms of the economic and social situation improving, and what would have happened anyway...
Alexandria, Va.: I made the trip from Khabarovsk to Irkutsk(Siberia) by train in January 1984. I remember the musical sounding names of Birobidzhan, Skororodino (I mailed a Post Card to friend from here), Chita as the train stopped at the these stations. Several years later I went to Mongolia by train from Irkutsk. The train stopped at Ulan Ude for 5 hours, I believe to change wheels on the train. Khabarovsk is my favorite Russian city. In 1984, the border was closed with China. Is the border open and can you enter China today from Khabarovsk?
Lisa Dickey: We're told that it's very easy now for Russian citizens to travel to China. In Vladivostok, there were cheap tours -- Russians could go for 2 or 3 days to China, without a visa, and then the companies that arranged their travel would bring back the maximum amount of goods -- liquor, or whatever -- allotted for each person. That way, the travel agency could make money on the side, keeping the prices cheap for Russians.
The Russians' attitudes toward China have been most interesting this time around. Many fear the economic impact China is having -- they feel like Russia is now flooded with cheap Chinese goods, putting Russian factories and workers out of business. Many have told us they think China will soon take over the world. There's a real friction between the cultures, I think, though not open hostility that I've seen. Many have told us that the Chinese are the most "work-loving" people they've ever seen. And I think that scares them.
Washington, D.C.: Lisa, I enjoy reading your travelogue and having been a Peace Corps volunteer in the former Soviet Union, and I can identify with virtually everything that you write about.
I have two questions: are you subjected to prices for foreigners for your train rides, museum visits, etc.? If so, how much more are they is it?
Question #2: You got some real cool I.T. sponsors to make this happen...how'd you do it?!
I really look forward to reading more. Great job. Maladets!
Lisa Dickey: Hi - thanks for your questions. There is still a dual pricing system here for some things -- museums, for example -- but train tickets are now one price for all. This is nice for foreigners, but not so nice for Russians, as instead of lowering foreign prices, they apparently raised prices for Russians.
Severna Park, Md.: I would guess that most of the common people who live in Russia now don't give too much thought about what specific style of government that exists as long as its not forced upon them. What have you observed, if anything that would characterize how their new system that has developed (or just come to be) in the past decade, affects their everyday life. Do they seem happy? Or do they believe another change needs to be made?
Lisa Dickey: This is absolutely true. People are very skeptical, if not cynical, about the government, and many say they don't really care what kind of government they have as long as they can wake up in the morning and know what the price of bread is going to be. If there's one complaint that people still have now -- and had ten years ago -- it's that before the fall of the Soviet Union, life was at least predictable and "stable." People are still nostalgic for a time when there weren't wild fluctuations in the value of their money, there weren't big changes in government or the press, and they could go about their lives in a relatively calm fashion. Of course, it's always easy to cast a golden hue over the "good old days," whether they were really that good or not.
San Francisco, Calif.: Hello Lisa! I have a question about the girl who married the Spaniard. Is meeting people through matchmaking agencies a common practice in Russia these days? Tell me more about how she got set up with this guy. Thanks!
Lisa Dickey: I don't have any specific data about marriage agencies, but anecdotally I think this is pretty common. There are lots of Russian women like Katya who are drawn by the idea of living abroad, and I think there are lots of non-Russian men enticed by the idea of a beautiful Russian bride. With the Internet now so widespread, even here, it's even easier to make arrangements for strangers to meet.
Arlington, Va.: Thank you so much for doing the blog-it is a real inspiration to me since I'm thinking about doing a trans-Sib trip next year. My question is for someone who's spent a lot of time in Moscow, what destination(s) are the most unique or memorable on your route? I really need to see the giant Lenin head though.
Lisa Dickey: The giant Lenin head is a must-see! All the places we've been to are memorable for one reason or another -- it depends on what you're looking for. For natural beauty, Lake Baikal is very hard to beat. For something completely different, the "Jewish Autonomous Region" a few hundred miles from China is pretty cool. Buryatia is fascinating, with its Buddhist culture and history. That's the great thing about Russia -- it's not all birch trees and identical villages. There's so much to this place, and every city / town we've been in has been completely different from every other place.
Washington, D.C.: Any comments from Russians on your last name, which is awesome when translated? (FYI, "dickey" in Russian means "wild") How apropos for such a trip. Shastilvovo puti!
Lisa Dickey: Yes, we were just joking about this earlier with our hosts in Ulan Ude, Oleg and Sveta. If you translate my first name, too, you get "Dikaya Lisa" -- or "wild fox." Yeah, baby.
McLean, Va.: Hi Lisa, Elaine Monaghan here, just saw you pop up on the Web site, curious to know whether Russians are asking you about the hurricanes and what they think about the response to Katrina. Hope all is well!
Lisa Dickey: Hi, Elaine! Glad you wrote in! Yes, the Russians are really fascinated by the hurricane situation. There has been a LOT of coverage here, in magazines and newspapers and on TV. People are really intrigued by the idea that something so terrible could happen in America, which they see as a strong, stable country. Lots of people asking me "How could this happen?" And I have no answer to give them.
Washington, D.C.: Did you know David the photographer before the trip?
Lisa Dickey: No, I didn't know David at all. When it became clear that Gary couldn't make the trip, I had to find a photographer quickly. I found his info on Mediabistro.com, and contacted him. Basically, I asked him to make a decision immediately -- like, that day -- as to whether he was willing to come on this three-month trip through Russia. He said he was, and I'll tell you, I'm lucky he did. He's taking great pictures, and has been a great traveling companion as well...
Washington, D.C.: How hard has it been to get on the Internet?
Lisa Dickey: Compared to 10 years ago, it's been a breeze. There are Internet cafes in every city, and you can also buy Internet cards that let you dial up locally if you have a computer and access to a landline. We also have an account with Russia Online -- 50 hours of connectivity a month for $20.
In 1995, by comparison, we had an arrangement with Sprint to upload photos via their phone lines, but there was no such thing across the country as dial-up access, or Internet cafes. And there certainly wasn't DSL.
In fact, people didn't have any clue what we were talking about when we told them we were posting to a Web site. Some thought we were trying to trick them, by hiding who we were really writing for. Now, even those who don't have computers at least know what the Internet is -- even in tiny Buryat villages.
Washington, D.C.: Hey Lisa, Melissa Andrews here... would you say the average Russian is better off now, or ten years ago when you last visited?
Lisa Dickey: Hi, Melissa! It definitely seems that the average Russian is better off now, though pensioners still have a very hard time of it. But judging from they way people dress, to the material goods they have at home, to the amount they're able to travel -- there's a real difference between now and then. There's a substantial middle class now, whereas before it was much smaller.
Munich, Germany: By gosh! During the Cold War, while friends of mine were visiting the Balshoi Theatre, I always believed that Russia and the Soviet Block were off limits to me, an electronics engineer working with supercomputer technology.
Now that this isn't the case, I have an interest in visiting the incredibly vast nature that Russia has to offer, such as Lake Baikal.
On the other hand, I've heard stories of vast exploitation of forests and environmental destruction due to faulty oil pipelines, etc.
What has your experience been like? Has the vastness of the land overwhelmed any sites of undue environmental neglect?
Lisa Dickey: There is definitely environmental damage that's been done here, and that's being done even today. I haven't done any research, but anecdotally, we've seen plenty of factories spewing out clouds, mounds of garbage in remote areas, and the film of coal residue on buildings.
Even so, it's totally worth it to come here and see the natural beauty Russia has to offer. It will be interesting for us to get to Lake Baikal this weekend, and find out whether that has changed at all. It was one of the cleanest, most pristine places in Russia -- here's hoping that's still the case.
Arlington, Va.: How did you get access to the expedition to Lake Baikal if it is primarily for scientists? What are they interested in studying there?
Lisa Dickey: We got access by contacting the same scientists we went on the expedition with in 1995. The Limnological Institute (Limnological means the study of fresh water) there has a number of scientists, who study all aspects of the lake. The first time around, our expedition was focused on mollusks in the lake. This time, we don't know yet what the focus is. But there are many species of fish and animals specific to Lake Baikal, as well as scientific study of the water itself and the lake bed.
Washington, D.C.: Is there anything that's really been surprising? Or is there anything that absolutely hasn't changed at all?
Lisa Dickey: A few things have been really surprising. I didn't think I'd see so much change in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. In just 10 years, those cities have changed a huge amount. I also didn't think we'd be such an oddity here! We've gotten stared at as much in Russian cities as we have in the tiny Buryat villages.
In Chita, one girl who heard us speaking English on Lenin Square came up to us and in a shaky voice asked where we were from. When we told her we were Americans, I thought she might faint. Her hands were shaking, and she started to sweat. And she didn't even see us on TV.
Bethesda, Md.: Hi Lisa. Is there a consensus on Putin among Russians or are opinions very varied?
Lisa Dickey: Opinions are very varied, though I'd say most of the people we've spoken with think he's doing a good job. Most people have nothing good to say about Yeltsin, so in comparison they like what Putin is doing. If nothing else, people praise the fact that he doesn't drink, that he's physically fit, and that he projects an aura of strength. For a country that went from being a "superpower" to a much weakened state, that kind of projection of strength seems to be very important.
Silver Spring, Md.: So, was Buyanto happy to see you? Or did he throw you out, right back to Ulan Ude?
Lisa Dickey: That, I cannot reveal ... until tomorrow! I can say, however, that I COULD NOT BELIEVE that the first thing his sister in law said was that we hadn't sent the photos. That was a bad moment!
Washington, D.C.: Hi Lisa, Laurent Durix here. How are Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath viewed in Russia? It has been a -huge- scandal here.
Russians are, for the most part, confused by it. Many have asked me how such a thing could have happened, and as I mentioned earlier, I have no answer for them. It's gotten a huge amount of coverage here, and people in every city have asked us about it. They also ask us frequently about Sept. 11th, and one told us a few days ago that a few Russian politicians had implied the whole thing was instigated by American secret forces -- that we blew the buildings up ourselves as a pretext for going into Iraq. I don't know whether any Russian politicians really said such a thing, but I can tell you I was surprised.
I visited the former Soviet Union back in '89, but spent most of my time in Ukraine. However, I did spend a few days in Moscow. How do Russians in general feel about the other former Soviet states, particularly Ukraine?
Lisa Dickey: Hi, Laurel -
People haven't said too much about the former Soviet states, except for one guy who told us Russia ought to take them all back! It seems as though people feel like they've got enough to worry about within Russia itself without worrying about other states, most of which have little in common, culturally, with Russia.
Lisa Dickey: Thanks for your questions, everybody - and don't forget to tell us where to go with our extra week during the second half of the trip! Please feel free to email us at russianchronicles@gmail.com. Thanks!
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Gene Weingarten's controversial humor column, Below the Beltway , appears every Sunday in the Washington Post Magazine. He aspires to someday become a National Treasure, but is currently more of a National Gag Novelty Item, like rubber dog poo.
He is online, at any rate, each Tuesday, to take your questions and abuse.
He'll chat about anything... except your mama.
This Week's Poll (please take one only): Men | Women
Weingarten is the author of "The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death" and co-author of "I'm with Stupid," with feminist scholar Gina Barreca. "Below the Beltway" is now syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group .
This will be an unusual intro; I ask you to bear with me. When the explanation for it is given, all will be clear and I promise that you will be entertained, especially all you female-type people. That is because, though the intro APPEARS to be about baseball, it is really about love and hate and relationships between men and women, just like that godawful Kostner move "For the Love of the Game". Specifically, it is about the complex and intensely emotional relationship between me and Chatwoman, Ms. Elizabeth Kelly. (Needless to say, this intro is a surprise to Chatwoman. She is reading it for the first time right now, just as you are.)
And so it is that we begin with an examination of the question: What if the Yankees got The Flash? The following argument was developed by me after consultation with my son, Daniel, and with David Von Drehle of the Washington Post. The copyright is held jointly by me, Dan, David, and The Washington Post and may not be reprinted, reproduced or otherwise used without the express written consent of Major-League Baseball.
First of all, once they sign The Flash, the Yankees would be wise to restructure their team entirely around him. To do anything less would be foolish and counterproductive, as I shall demonstrate below.
By way of review, the Flash is a man of ordinary dimensions, but possessing one important superpower. He can run at the speed of light. To a baseball team, this is a huge advantage, but only if managed prudently.
To begin with, when the Yanks are in the field, all other position players (except the pitcher and catcher) must congregate along the baseline, and step out of play the instant the pitch is delivered. This is to avoid death or serious injury via collision with The Flash once the ball is in play. The Flash can handle all fielding himself. It doesn't matter much where he positions himself, but short center field would do nicely.
Obviously, his speed will permit him to field any fly balls, and most ground balls, before they hit the ground. Because we can assume that he has only normal amateur catching abilities, it is presumed that he will drop some of these balls, at which point he merely needs to pick them up and run to first base. At the speed of light, this should eliminate the likelihood of ANY hits by the opposing team, other than balls that leave the stadium. (Unlike Superman, the Flash cannot fly, so the Yanks will be vulnerable to home runs. As a strategic move to counteract this, the Yanks would intentionally walk most power hitters. Virtually all of them will remain on base through three outs obtained by the Flash's amazing fielding abilities; most will be doubled off base as The Flash fields the ball, and races to second then first. )
This overall strategy would probably mean that the average number of runs against the Yankees would be less than one. A two-run game would be a rarity.
But what about when the Yanks are batting? The Flash is only one of nine men in a lineup. How much damage can he do?
Overwhelming damage, as you will see, though his value will be limited so long as the opposing managers did the appropriate strategic maneuvers.
Obviously, if he is pitched to with the bases empty, the Flash hits a home run nearly every time he gets up. Why? Because all he needs to do is lay down a bunt, and he will be around the bases before the ball even hits the ground. (This is even allowing for a slight but necessary voluntary diminution of speed; at the speed of light, the Flash's trip around the bases would not be visible to the umps, so he would have to slow himself to the point where he was a visible blur. This is not a problem; a one-second trip around the bases would suffice in most all situations.)
So the canny opposing manager (Lou Piniella, for example) will walk The Flash whenever he comes to bat with the bases empty. Moreover, by walking the batter in FRONT of the Flash when necessary, the opposing manager can make sure the Flash very seldom gets up with the bases empty. (Obviously, Joe Torre would bat the Flash first in the lineup, so that every game he gets at least one bases-empty at bat. Even if he is walked, he will score any time a Yankee batting behind him hits into fair territory - he will score on a ground ball, and he will "tag up" and score on a caught fly ball. The Yanks start almost every game 1-0.)
But let's say in midgame you have The Flash at bat with no out and a runner on first, via a strategic walk. The Flash's speed is diminished as a weapon, since rules say that if he passes another baserunner on the basepaths, he is out. Suddenly, for all intents and purposes, The Flash is forced to run at human speed, should he get on base.
Now, if I were Joe Torre, if there was one out or less, I would instruct the baserunner to simply attempt to steal, and if he were successful, to keep running, until he was tagged out. Then the Flash can do his thing, and there is a certain run.
In addition to this huge advantage (pretty much guaranteeing at least four or five runs a game, even if no other Yankee gets a hit) I think we should remember that with The Flash handling all fielding chores, the Yanks do not have to worry at all about the fielding competency of its other players. Torre can simply stack the lineup with guys who can hit.
The average Yankees win, with the Flash, would be by a score of roughly 7-0, sometimes 7-1. It would be a big story when they lost a game; it would probably lead the network news.
Now, here is the reason I have discussed this. Over the last few weeks, Ms. Kelly has seen fit to hide lines in the intro to my chat, suggesting that I will not answer questions of certain types. Those types coincide with the sorts of questions I favor but that she finds tiresome: Questions about The Flash, about Visible Panty Lines, about clocks, about potty etiquette and, this very week, about "your mama." She thinks I haven't noticed.
Now, it will be instructive for me to explain something about my relationship to Ms. Kelly. I love Ms. Kelly. And I fear Ms. Kelly. She is my boss in this chat thing. She pays me and disciplines me. And she is tireless and indefatigable and mammothly competent, having built Post chatdom into something that is the envy of the online journalistic world. Despite being some 20-odd years my junior, she wields enormous chat power over me, including the ability to restrict the postings that I see. Also, to comment acerbically and quite publicly about answers I may make. Also, to sneak stuff into my intro, things I have not authorized. Obviously, these are powers she deploys at time with great relish, and to great impact, and, frankly, with commendable humor.
Some men would meekly accept such things, and even be a little excited by them, for, as I can attest, Ms. Kelly is an exciting woman. I am not, however, that sort of man. And so it is that for this chat, today, I shall change the rules. Ahem. From this moment forward, for this chat, I SHALL ACCEPT ONLY QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO 1) VISIBLE PANTY LINES, 2) THE FLASH 3) CLOCKS 4) POTTY ETIQUETTE and 5) YOUR MAMA.
I will note that prior to the start of the chat, I received about 20 posts that I have already answered. I will intersperse these questions, and my answers, throughout the chat. But for any question received from this point onward, the rule above applies and is inviolate.
Now, you might say: Well, if Chatwoman has the power not to send you questions she does not wish to send you, can't she simply refuse to pass any more questions on? This is a good question is, yes, she could do that. But, above all, Ms. Kelly is a professional, and it is her job to make these chats as good as possible. She simply will not do that; it would be self-sabotage, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is something way beneath her.
I am in receipt of a photo taken by my friend Rachel Manteuffel at Saturday's march against Bush. It is remarkable because it has someone wearing a t-shirt with an apostrophic illiteracy unlike I have ever seen. And I look for these things and catalogue them. It is a historic misuse of an apostrophe, a grandiose misuse, a heroic misuse. The sign reads: "Somewhere in Texas a Village is Missing I'ts Idiot."
Back on baseball, last night Marc Fisher and I went to the Yanks-O's game, a thorough drubbing of a very bad team. What a delight. The stands were filled with Yankees fans. When the Yanks took the field, there was a roar from the crowd. When the O's took the field, there was silence. ("They might as well be the Minnesota Twins," Marc said.) When ARod doubled with the bases loaded, there was chanting for "MVP! MVP!"
At one point, a guy behind us cheered for the O's and I turned around and yelled at him to be quiet and show some respect.
Meanwhile, the last three games I have been at, the team I wanted to win, did. The first time I went with Jeremy Weiss, breaking my Nats curse. The second time I went with Jeremy Fisher. This time I went with Marc Fisher. Now I worry that I must go with someone named Jeremy and/or Fisher to absolutely guarantee a win.
Good comics week. The CPOW is Sunday's Opus. First Runner Up is Friday's Candorville. Honorable Mentions: Thursday's Pearls Before Swine and today's Nonsequitur.
Let's go. Yo Mama. Clocks. VPL. Potty Etiquette. The Flash.
washingtonpost.com: Comic Pick of the Week: Opus (Sept. 25)
First Runner Up: Candorville (Sept. 23)
Honorable Mentions: Pearls Before Swine (Sept. 22), Non Sequitur (Sept. 27)
Raleigh, N.C.: Loved your article about Kevin Trudeau. My favorite claim in the book is that sunscreen actually causes cancer. The sad thing is there will be somebody out at the beach next July looking like a lobster because of him.
Watch your back, Gene. "They" might be after you.
washingtonpost.com: Below the Beltway: It's Enough to Make You Sick , ( Post Magazine, Sept. 25 )
Gene Weingarten: Oh, I've no doubt they are. Now.
Yoma, MA: How much were you paid to plug "Natural Cures?"
"...the No. 1 national best-selling advice book in America," proclaims Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten. "...my standards may be a little high", says Weingarten, '...defining a "good book."' "Follow these simple steps, and remain disease-free for the rest of your life." "My favorite... book" "...it is not the ordinary... person to whom this book is addressed" "I was outraged that I had not thought of it first." "Kevin, I'm merely doing my altruistic part for the nation's health, just like you."
Gene Weingarten: Hahahaha. You may well see this.
Bowie, Md: Gene, this week's column has touched on something that has bothered me for some time: Why is it that as people get older, they fall for outrageous pitches from snake-oil salesman? I've noticed this in my parents' generation. People who seemed perfectly normal throughout their lives become more gullible as they approach retirement. They seem content to rationalize away hundreds of years of scientific and medical discovery as bunk. They develop the mindset that if something is from the mainstream, it must be wrong. The truth is being hidden from them and people like Mr. Trudeau are heroes for exposing the truth.
My question is: Is this going to happen to me?
Gene Weingarten: I have not noticed that this afflicts older people.
I think we all have a sense they "they" are out to get us. Trudeau is preying on this, and on something else: We have a medical insurance crisis in this country. So isn't it wonderful to think that you might be able to cure yourself for pennies.
This is a bad, bad book. It is preying on the helpless.
Washington, D.C.: : Am I just really terrible since I have done five things listed in the poll?! I am a 20-something non-married woman, though.
1. Shares a passionate kiss with acquaintance
3. Has lunch with a male friend, eating off each others' plates, unbidden
4. Carries on a long, somewhat flirtatious email correspondence with a man, sharing secrets and deeply personal observations. No physical contact at all
5. Confides to a close friend some serious disappointments with s.o., and longings for a change in their relationship
Admittedly, the first one is terrible, but the others seem perfectly normal, though most poll responders (as of late Monday night) only said they had done one or maybe two. Tell me Gene, is something wrong with me? Is it skewed because I've never been married?
Gene Weingarten: I have done six.
Gene Weingarten: And one of them is number six!
Gene Weingarten: Number Six, however, is a fraud. I did it for a story, with full awareness of a significant other. However, it does qualify, technically, as the question is worded.
So, my real answer is five, like you. But bear in mind that I am an old man, with a long life history and several significant others. Still, I appear to be an anomaly. A slut, like you.
Richmond, Va.: Hello Mr. Weingarten,
I'm a huge fan of your column and have been since I was a freshman in high school (I'm now a sophomore at VCU). After being involved in journalism since that freshman year, I have understood that your work as a columnist is simply unequaled among your contemporaries. It came as a shock when I found this in the Commonwealth Times at VCU:
"Poorly written but highly amusing articles can be a drug. They provide an odd fix that an article about socioeconomic issues could never satiate. Unimportant, silly and egocentric topics are bruises that run along the arms of bad columnists. If the bad columnist's soul could be personified, they would look scrawny, pale, bloodshot and happily high while they prostitute journalistic guidelines for enjoyable writing. Dave Barry and Gene Weingarten are the Courtney Love and Robert Downing Jr. in this world of unprofessional columns, and they're loved by their fellow addicts."
This writer then goes on to explain that your kind of writing has no place in any newspaper. My first reaction was to respond to her in your defense, but I'd rather see what you have to say. Do you think your soul really looks the way she describes it? Do you think her e-mail address (bureacrat85-yahoo.com) reveals why she is so humorless?
The full text is here .
washingtonpost.com: If only she'd gotten Robert Downey Jr.'s name right, she would have persuaded me.
Gene Weingarten: This is great!
Well, just this paragraph, a screed on poor writing, contains one significant error of fact, one serious error in grammar, and appears to be making the argument that "enjoyable" writing is bad.
I bet this babe is a hoot at parties.
Nowhere, USA: I have a question for Pat the Perfect. I was reading a couple of stories on The Post Web site yesterday about evolution and intelligent design. Occasionally, but not always, Intelligent Design was capitalized, but evolution never was. Why?
Gene Weingarten: Good question! Pat?
Washington, DC: Somebody call Tom the Butcher. From today's Health section article on vascectomies, regarding the author's surgery:
"While I was dreaming about fish and bananas, Laurent was a busy man, as I later learned."
Gene Weingarten: A truly excellent line. I suspect it might have slipped past the editor, as it were. But possibly not.
I'm sure you'll get a million posts pointing this out, but you didn't give "none" as an option for the last question on the poll. I have never done any of those things with a guy while I was romantically involved with someone else. I'm certain it was an oversight, as I don't believe you're cynical enough to say that everyone has crossed that line at one time or another.
And speaking of that line (and I'd imagine this is part of the point of the poll), let me point out that while I found that about the last half of the options weren't significant marital infidelities, that doesn't mean I think they're okay. There's a matter of degree here, and while it wouldn't be a dealbreaker for my boyfriend to, say, get a backrub from another woman, it would almost certainly inspire a discussion about boundaries and respect.
Gene Weingarten: Yeah, I should have had a "none." You never checked out a hunky guy, while in a committed relationship? Wow.
Chicago, Ill.: This will probably be mentioned in the opening monologue, but Buzz Mclain's article on vasectomies is worth the read.
They should get him to replace that Jean Wittgenstein in the Post Magazine.
Gene Weingarten: Excellent piece. Good sense of humor. I particularly liked the second vasectomy joke. But boy, wasn't that a jarringly gratuitous mention of the physical appearance of the anesthesiologist?
Arlington, Va.: Why not have the Flash pitch? Or at the very least be the closer. The torque behind his arm would make every pitch unhittable and, as there would be no baserunners, passed balls would not be a problem.
Gene Weingarten: Dan and I had a serious debate about this. I contend that you cannot presume the Flash can pitch, that all his muscles move the way his legs do. He has one talent. Foot speed.
Houghton, Mich.: Okay, da Yanks have the Flash. What's to prevent the BoSox from getting the Mighty Thor? He's a friggin god, for pete's sake Gene, and would certainly nullify any Flash advantage. Other than Thor, I guess I'd take Green Lantern. And probably master strategist Bruce Wayne to helm my team.
washingtonpost.com: This hour is going to do me in. I just know it.
Gene Weingarten: Please. The Mighty Thor has no athletic ability. He is pure brawn.
Washington, D.C.: Who are your closest friends at The Post? Pick the top five or six.
Gene Weingarten: No surprises here. The names you know. Achenbach, Fisher, Kelly, Myers, Shroder, Von Drehle. I am probably forgetting someone obvious, who will now hate me. There are plenty more people I like a lot and consider friends.
Rockville, Md.: So Gene, you wrote a lovely tribute to your now-defunct Mazda. What lovely new vehicle did you find to replace it? Maybe a Hummer?
Gene Weingarten: I delayed and delayed for a month on junking the car and then caved. I KEPT IT. I could not euthanize it. Spent $600 to fix it. Then, when it came time for the inspection, was told I had to spend another $350 for a new catalytic converter. I did.
I was going to write an ironic "correction," but couldn't figure out how.
Bethesda, Md.: I know the new poll on Survey Monkey must be easier for Ms. Squirmy Legs but I like to old ones better. The main problem is that there is no way to veiw the answers without taking the poll. Is there any way we pay MSL a little more and have her create the polls without survey monkey?
washingtonpost.com: Link Monkey is not, alas, a code monkey, so she has to use tools like Survey Monkey to make the increasingly complex polls for the Evil Genius Monkey.
Alexandria, Va.: Have you ever noticed VPL on any baseball players? For those that still wear the old school short pants should be easy to see whether they're wearing boxers or briefs. I miss Brady Anderson a little.
Gene Weingarten: This is a good question. You know, I should put this out to the ladies in the chatdience, since I don't check out their butts very much. Chatwoman, for example: Have you noticed any baseball player VPL?
Olney, Md.: You Flash tutorial is entertaining, but contains one glaring error. Super-human speed will not assist The Flash in bunting, which requires considerable baseball skill; many major-league players are not particularly good at it. No, your best bet is to bat him ninth. Like Guzman, he'll help you on offense occasionally. Unlike Guzman, he will be a holy terror on defense.
Gene Weingarten: That's totally ridiculous. He can bunt. He sees things in slomo, for crying out loud. Remember, he doesn't have to lay down a GOOD bunt, he merely has to get the ball in fair territory.
New York, N.Y.: Does staring at VPL count as "undressing with the eyes?"
Annapolis, Md.: Let's say The Flash is a woman and has VPL. Could said female Flash run fast enough around the world to catch a glimpse of the VPL and change underwear before leaving for her day?
Gene Weingarten: You mean, could she run fast enough to see her own backside. This is an excellent question, but I think the answer is no?
Do we have any theoretical physicists out there who can address this question more authoritatively?
Fairfax, Va.: I must point out Gene, that the Flash, in his current incarnation of Wally West (formerly Kid Flash of the Teen Titans) is not capable of running faster than the speed of sound.
Shortly before Barry Allen, Wally's uncle (and the Flash most people are familiar with) died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Wally discovered that he was having heart palpitations when he tried to run faster than mach 1.
Gene Weingarten: He can't run faster than Mach one! Holy crap.
Well, mach one ought to be able to get around the bases in one second, right? That's only a distance of 360 feet.
Kevin Trudeau: Did you know he has had a felony conviciton for fraud? I saw it on the Smoking Gun site.
Gene Weingarten: Yes, it was in the column. I believe he did two years in the can.
Geek City, USA: Wow! Chatwoman rules! That is one swanky looking poll. Nice work.
washingtonpost.com: And look at the thanks I get.
Gene Weingarten: Sorry, this is not about any of the acceptable topics.
Cats in Sin, KS: Well, now, THIS is a useful site. Somehow, the fact that there are over 2000 pictures on this site is deeply weird...
Gene Weingarten: This is delightfully stupid! I especially like that there is a CatsInSinksNews.
Glover Park, Washington, D.C.: Gene,
You weren't evil enough about Kevin Trudeau, who I believe is evil incarnate. He is such a con artist, and people swallow his bull hook, line and sinker. He's the #1 non-fiction book on the New York Times list. How is that possible?
How can we get rid of him? That's the real question.
(Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. He is at the top of my pet peeve list, right up there with men who spit in public -- what's that about, anyway?)
Gene Weingarten: You think I WASN'T TOUGH ENOUGH on Kevin? Wow. I will save this post for the lawsuit.
I get this men-spitting question from time to time, and have no answer. I don't spit. I don't know any men who do. Apparenty, when it occurs it bothers women hugely more than it bothers men, because you guys are obsessed by it. You notice it everywhere; the world seems a cold and hostile environment characterized by large men hawking loogies everywhere you go. There are loogie cooties hovering in the air at all times. I don't get it.
Facetio, US: In one of last week's updates, you wrote, while defining irony and satire and so forth, "Someone as brilliant as you are knows what sarcasm is, obviously." This is a lovely example of sarcasm, but I thought it might be worth pointing out that many people don't know exactly what sarcasm means. If you are sarcastic, your remark is cutting -- the intent is to wound the person you are addressing. But many people say they are being sarcastic when they say something like "I just love going to Washington outdoor events in August and roasting in the heat all day" or "Isn't it wonderful for us that George Bush, a man with the intellect and subtly of a styrofoam cup, is going to shape the direction of the country for decades with his Supreme Court appointees" or whatever. Such remarks are better described as facetious.
Although I guess if George Bush reads this, his feelings might be hurt.
Gene Weingarten: In checking the dic, I find, to my astonishment, that you are correct. The main definition of sarcasm is the use of "a cutting or caustic remark." Irony is only a secondary characteristic of it. I never knew this. AND THIS IS MY BUSINESS. So aren't I the genius?
(Why isn't it AMN'T I the genius? I still have never received an adequate explanation. Pthep?)
The Fla, SH: There have actually been several Flashes over the years as previous ones passed away. The second Flash was a man named Barry Allen, who gained his powers when a lighting bolt smashed through a window and hit a bookshelf full of chemicals which subsequently spilled on him making him the fastest man alive... or almost. The Silver-Age Flash had two races with Superman to see who was the fastest. Both races ended up in ties. Therefore I propose that immediately upon signing the Flash, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein would sign Superman to a multi-year deal and the current stalemate would continue.
washingtonpost.com: The "Silver Age" Flash? See, your plan is going to backfire, Gene. This will go down in history as the most boring chat. Ever... except for the 2 percent of your audience at the gaming convention.
Gene Weingarten: No, the Sox would have an advantage. Superman can leap to catch homers before they enter the stands.
Steinbrenner would have no choice but to sign Plastic Man.
Sexy, OR...: So, we all know where you stand on VPL, but what about just VP? As in, the woman in front of me on a Metro escalator yesterday wearing white pants and floral undies. Is this as gauche-seeming to men as it is to women, or do you guys like this too?
Gene Weingarten: We like ANYTHING that assists the imaginating with concrete imagery. Women simply do not GET this.
Arlington, Va.: This question is posed by a woman who (of course) spent years trying to avoid VPL only to find out men actually like it. How has the increasing prevalence of thong underwear among young(er) women affected the VPL phenomenon? Are you guys disappointed? Or do the low slung pants with visible thong strap still work for you?
Gene Weingarten: It's a demonic development. A disaster.
Pitching Flash: Yes, he may only have foot speed. But his foot speed is so amazingly fast that by sheer force of physics it would have to, in a pitching motion, give him tremendous arm speed as well.
Otherwise, when his feet took off for first base, his arms would be ripped off at the shoulders. Because they're not, then the speed of his foot stride toward the plate should enable his arm to fly toward the plate fast enough to throw 200 mph.
Gene Weingarten: Okay, granted. But you have to assume he could also control the pitch. I am not prepared to make that assumption.
Outati, ME: So if the Flash carried one of your beloved mechanical clocks, he'd never need to worry about tightening the springs, because of the relativistic effects, right?
Gene Weingarten: So long as he remained above the speed of light, yes.
Orgas, MS: Did you catch this: 9 Chickweed Lane , ( Sept. 18 )?
This is definitely a first for the funny pages!
Gene Weingarten: The cartoonist, despite his name, is male, and he really, really really likes drawing the attractive human female. However, I don't think this really works. I don't' think the setup is quite right. For one thing, she is obviously clothed. And the body language doesn't seem quite right, either, does it?
Speakin'o'yerma, Ma: I have a genuine question about humor and meanness. When writing a humor piece that skewers a person or his work (like Sunday's, which I quite enjoyed), how do you avoid crossing the line into ad hominem meanness? Or, if the person is an obvious flimflam artist who needs a good smack, should you even worry about crossing that line?
My sense of humor leans to the acerbic/satirical end of the spectrum. Much of what I find humorous on TV or in the paper seems to involve, on some level, being mean to someone: talking smack about celebs, casting aspersions on a politician's intelligence, etc.
This bothers me, because I don't like to think of myself as a gratuitously mean person, although I certainly have a mean streak. I worry that if I were to write something devastatingly witty and cruel about someone -- even if he deserved it -- I would, on some level, feel bad about hurting his feelings in a cheap attempt to get a laugh.
You don't strike me as a mean person, but I do find you wickedly funny. Do you worry about this sort of thing? Have you ever lampooned someone and then regretted it? How do you draw the line? Is the answer thick skin, equal amounts of self-deprecation, or just a good legal team?
Should I stick to fart jokes, which I find hilarious in a good-natured way?
(If you haven't guessed, I am in fact a girl.)
Gene Weingarten: Dave Barry has a very good rule, which I try to follow. If you are going to be mean to someone, make sure it is someone with more power than you.
In other words, being mean to GW Bush is fine. He can take it. He has to expect it. Because he is so public, and has so much power over us, anything within reason that we say about him, of a critical nature, even a humiliating nature, is fair game. Same goes for some guy who is making a fortune on a phony best-selling book. He has placed himself in the kitchen, and has to expect some heat.
Because so much of what I write is critical and/or lampooning and/or vicious character assassinatin, I am occasionally exploring the boundaries of this rule. If the person I am making fun of is less powerful than I, I try to make myself at least an equal part of the butt of the joke.
I have screwed this up in the past, and usually felt bad about it. Good example: A couple of years ago, I did a column about an inquiry I got from a book publisher, suggesting I interview the author of a new book of cartoons. The book was kind of New-Agey dorky, but the inquiry was completely idiotic -- suggesting the actual questions I should ask the woman. I did a column about this, a deeply sarcastic column in which I said that if the publisher was going to do my work for me (coming up with questions) I would do their work for them, and come up with answers.
So I used their questions, but made up answers in the voice of the poor, hapless cartoonist, whom I had never spoken with. Now, I made it CLEAR I had never spoken with her, and that my answers were made up. But the answers were incredibly vicious, and made her look like a moron. My theory was that I would be giving her book way more publicity than it ever was going to get otherwise, and this is a cynical business, so I was probably doing her a favor.
Afterwards, it became clear to me that the young woman was realy hurt. I regretted it. I had more power than she did. She had done nothing wrong, other than employ a jerky publicist.
The Flash would Ru, IN: Baseball. How BORING! I can't even imagine why anyone would want to consider that version of baseball!
As far as your winning streak, maybe it's just a chain...Jeremy Weiss, Jeremy Fisher, Marc Fisher, Marc ???, and so on--the possibilities are limitless (especially if the spellings don't have to be identical, there are a lot more Marks than Marcs).
Oh, and on apostrophes--we have a bottle of cranberry drink mix that says "perfect for Cosmo's"...Cosmo's what???
Gene Weingarten: Very, very good. I need a Marc.
Now, the Cosmo's thing is interesting. I see why they did it. Otherwise, you would read it as "cosmos," as in the universe.
Excellent points on the Flash. I think the only thing you have forgotten to mention is the infield fly rule, in which Flash-on-first would be automatically out regardless of his ability to tag up. Although... since the Flash could steal second, third, and home on the first pitch after he reaches base, all the next Yankee batter would have to do would be to take the first pitch every time.
But his best sport would be football.
Gene Weingarten: Good point, on football. He would score on every punt or kickoff. The team would LITERALLY be unbeatable. You could tie them, theoretically, and lose in overtime if you won the coin toss, but that would never happen.
Flash baseball theory: OK, I don't much care about baseball or the Flash, but in keeping with the spirit of Gene's coup (sorry, Chatwoman), I must ask, is there a flaw in your plan for the Yankees? You acknowledge that the Flash would have only average catching abilities, so wouldn't his batting abilities also be average? And it seems to me, most of us average types couldn't hit a major-league-pitched baseball ever. Gene?
Gene Weingarten: Having actually had an at bat against a major league pitcher, and having real spazzo abilities athletically, I can safely say that the Flash could bunt almost any pitch in the strike zone, with just limited abilities. So long as that is all he has to do, and he only needs to bunt it fair.
Veal Fattening Pen, Suburban Md.: Hi Gene -- This question is more for my fellow Gene Chatizens, in hopes that they can help a guy out. But if you've got any suggestions, bring 'em on.
Next week, my company is moving to a new building. New building means no more private offices -- I'll be relocating to a cube (aka Veal Pen), configurated so that my back will be to the door opening, and everyone under the sun will be able to see the computer screen as they walk by.
Now look, I work hard. But I also enjoy some downtime here and there. The Web beckons...
So I'm in search of tips and tricks from cubicle dwellers. I need to make sure The Man doesn't catch me taking your latest poll and checking out the CPOW.
washingtonpost.com: I keep a small rearview mirror on the upper right corner of my monitor. You can find them online. Works like a charm.
Washington, D.C.: So Gene, I am wondering why the puritans at The Post decided to excise today's "B.C." Was it done to protect my delicate sensibilities? I felt ever so grateful, nevertheless out of curiosity I went to comics.com to check out the offending strip. I am still scratching my head as to what are the "content issues" that led to the puritans' decision. In case you haven't seen it, Gene, it's one of those two-panel Wiley's Dictionary comics. Panel one shows the word to be defined: euthanasia. Panel two shows the "definition": "Not much for a youth in Asia to look forward to." So it's a stupid pun and a political statement against euthanasia. So what? Doonesbury, Boondox, Candorville, not to mention the vile and unfunny Pricklytown (or whatever it's called) have political statements all the time. What gives?
washingtonpost.com: B.C. , ( Sept. 27 )
I have zero idea why The Post killed this. I would have killed it too, but because it is an old, stupid joke, not particularly well told. I see no offense here, to anyone.
Interestingly, it WAS in the paper edition of the paper. It appears to have been killed from the website only.
Centreville, Va.: One thing I found interesting about the poll was that while I apparently have a fairly lenient scale of what constitutes infidelity, I would find myself extremely uncomfortable doing things that I classified as not being an act of infidelity.
I'm not sure if I'm just an excellent model of cognitive dissonance, or still not awake yet.
Gene Weingarten: You sound like a particularly ethical/moral person, actually. That sort of defines it, no?
Alexandria, Va.: So I'm sitting here watching this Bob Dylan documentary. And the only thing it's making me feel is jealous. Very very jealous. Your generation and the one before you lived in idyllic times and bled the great things in the world dry. We're left with nothing but a happy life. No blues, no folk, just suburbs everywhere.
Gene Weingarten: Suburbs make you happy? Suburbs make me sad.
So, yes, it is true. We had all the music and angst. If it is any consolation, our clothes, furniture and architecture really stank. Particularly the 60s architecture. It is still stinking up the joint.
Dave Barry's Rule: Wow, I like that rule! By Dave's rule, I can be mean to just about anyone I meet on a given day. Actually, even to our cats and dog.
No, I don't think you were too hard on Kevin Trudeau. Trudeau deserves nothing more than what John D. MacDonald described (in a Travis McGee novel) as something like "great braying hoots of derisive laughter." That's not an exact quote, but you get the point.
Gene Weingarten: My guess: Trudeau liked the column. Three million more mentions of his book.
Pat the Perfect: I'm not sure how the capitalization of "intelligent design" fits within the categories of Yo Mama. Clocks. VPL. Potty Etiquette. The Flash, but you did ask:
The Post doesn't capitalize the term. It did appear like that once in the last eight (or more) recent stories, but that was an aberration. A more difficult issue is whether to use quotation marks around it on first reference, since many people see that not as a purely descriptive term (design is after all by definition intelligent, or done with a purpose), but one that masks a actual meaning of supernatural design.
I see we've gone back and forth on this, and would guess that the quotes will disappear as the term becomes more familiar even if people find it untrue (as in "reality TV"). There was also a reference to "so-called intelligent design," which I think reflects too much bias for a story that's not an opinion piece.
Gene Weingarten: Gotcha. Thanks. The link is to VPL. I am thinking about yours, see? So the whole answer dovetails.
Here Not There: Interesting thing with Flash playing football is that by having him play both sides of the ball, the opposing offense would be absolutely REQUIRED to only call running plays, as he would be able to at least knock down any pass, almost as soon as it left the QB's arm. (Though we cannot suppose his ability to bring down the interception or get the sack...he's kinda scrawny).
Gene Weingarten: Very, very true. You wouln't even need a backfield. Everyone could be packed at the line!
Cubela, ND: What does Trudeau say about autoimmune diseases like diabetes? I like the evil medical empire. Without them, I would be dead several times over.
Gene Weingarten: I am glad you asked. Trudeau defines as the number one cause of diabetes: Prescription drugs.
Also: artificial sweeteners and overuse of white flour and white sugar.
His cure involves eliminating all nonprescription and prescription drugs, and getting a "candida cleanse." He also prescribes raw apple cider vinegar and a secret herb he doesn't reveal because he has been prohibited to by the horrible FTC.
This is one bad, bad, dangerous book.
The Discover reader and the subsequent posters on XX and XY genius inheritance missed the central point of the Discover article which was that genetic mutation impacts men more than women. To quote the article "When an X-linked gene mutates in a woman, a backup gene on the second X chromosome can fill the gap. But when an X-linked gene mutation occurs in a man, his Y stands idly by, like an onlooker at a train wreck." The theory proposed was that genetic mutations in the X chromosome survive intact in the first generation males, but become diluted with subsequent generations due to female children inheriting one mutated X and one good X from the parents. Male children only get the good X from the mother. One of the researchers hypothesized that this mutation inheritance system is the cause of men clustering at both ends of the intelligence scale (i.e., more super-geniuses AND half-wits are men.) By the way, none of the researchers was named Larry Summers.
Gene Weingarten: Now, finally, this all makes sense.
D.C. Oriented: Gene, I remember seeing a situation on Daytime TV where a man and woman who were co-workers (each with a spouse) would find a secluded location, and manually satisfied themselves while looking at each other. No phyisical contact whatsoever (so they say).
Somehow they rationalized that this was not a Marital Violation. Not surprisingly, their spouses disagreed.
Gene Weingarten: I disagree. It is childish to argue otherwise. If you are going there, go all the way; they are the same thing.
Eating off someone's plate: Gene, why did the "eating off someone's plate" question bother me the most?? I almost decided that it WAS infidelity. Its just so creepy! With a co-worker? Ack! Why does this bother me so much?? It made me pause way more than any other part of the survey...
Gene Weingarten: It bothered Gina, too! She declared it a serious infidelity, even though she did it. With me.
VPL is trashy. It will always be trashy. I'm a young female and I suffer through thongs to prevent VPL. I'm sorry if you guys like it, but you'll just have to get your jollies elsewhere. It's trashy, no other way to say it.
Gene Weingarten: See, this gets to the nub of the issue. Who are women dressing for -- men, or other women? The answer seems to be other women. I accept that and respect you for it, but it doesn't have to make me happy.
Alexandria, Va.: Gene, I sent my parents a link to today's (9/26) "Get Fuzzy." My father grew up around harness racing and responded:
In harness racing, when horses move both right legs together and both left legs together, they are called pacers. When they move opposite legs together, they are called trotters. Pacers are generally faster than trotters. Thoroughbreds gallop.
I thought it was bizzare he would challenge that, not that Isaac Newton invented the cat flap or that cats can't describe ultrasonic frequencies.
Anyway, in case Darby checks in this week, I thought he should know he got that one wrong. Poop.
washingtonpost.com: Get Fuzzy , ( Sept. 26 )
Ashburn, Va.: Who are these people who think having weekly sex with a co-worker does not constitute a marital infidelity? If that doesn't do it, what does?
Gene Weingarten: I think they are people who didn't read the question right. Or, if they are women, they are people I want to meet.
Blacksburg, Va.: What exactly does "Driving Manu,AL" think the Car Talk guys opinion on engine braking is? Constant use, such as long mountain downhills will wear your breaks out REAL fast. To avoid this, you engine brake. (Yes, engine braking in the city and other flat places is stupid. I'm city born and raised, but I learned engine braking and used it quite a bit in the mountains this summer) But I'm just an idiot, right? Maybe there are experts on this topic?
Ray: When going downhill, Laurence, you have to specifically take action to get engine braking. If you're going down a long, steep hill, and you want to use engine braking to avoid riding the brakes (which is absolutely the right thing to do), then you have to downshift into Third, Second or even First gear until you get enough engine braking to keep your speed under control. (December 1999, www.cartalk.com)
Ray: In fact, it's not a bad idea to keep the car in a lower gear than normal in the snow. First, it'll help keep you from accidentally driving too fast. But also, you can slow the car by simply letting up on the accelerator, using the engine braking to reduce your reliance on the brakes. (February 2003)
Ray: My brother has a brilliant answer for everything, doesn't he? Actually you CAN go down the mountains and use your brakes a lot less. Here's how: When you start a long descent, downshift into a lower gear... Start by dropping it into 3rd gear, and go to second or first if need be. You want to find a gear that allows you to coast down the hill at a reasonable speed, letting the natural engine braking keep you from going too fast. You can use the accelerator to speed up a bit between curves, and then simply take your foot off the gas to slow down going into the curves.
Tom: Now, a lot of people who do this for the first time write back to us in horror and say, "The engine was screaming!" And we say, "Yeah, but don't worry about it." The engine is turning faster than you're used to, but it's not being overworked because it's acting as the brake. And as long as you don't accelerate to, say, 80 mph in 2nd gear and grossly over-rev it, you're not hurting the engine. (See your owner's manual for the maximum speed in each gear on your particular car.) (February 1999)
Gene Weingarten: Aha. Well, perhaps we all stand corrected. Though some of this is not really using the engine to break, IMHO, it is using the appropriate lower gear to go downhill, which I do.
Air Force O, NE: Remember that weird, um, game you showcased in your chat a few weeks ago involving a naked, apparently dead lady falling in a fathomless landscape of bouncy balls?
Gene Weingarten: It is! It is!
Dear Chatwoman:: This chat is the Lamest. Thing. Ever. Please do something!
washingtonpost.com: He's out of control. I'm sorry and I suggest you come back next week.
Gene Weingarten: Nonsense. This is a rollicking party of wit and wisdom.
Washington, D.C.: Does The Flash work for The Post Web site? "B.C." has been reinstated.
Gene Weingarten: Apparently, the Post realized we ran it in the dead tree edition, so figured, what the heck
Desert Southwest: I found it interesting that "none" was not among the possible answers for question four. Do you figure "none" is beyond the realm of possibility, or only possible for someone who hasn't been married that long? I realized looking through those options that, while there are one or two on the list that I would not consider outside the realm of possibility, I haven't actually done even one of them. This surprised me, since I've been rather free-thinking on such things in the past -- but then, I've never felt like this about someone and it turns out that makes an enormous difference in what I want to do. My beliefs about what's okay haven't changed, but my feelings about what I personally want to do have. I've only been married a year, so perhaps all you loyal long-married persons would tell me that will change.
Now I will have to ponder this new data about myself.
Gene, would your answers to this poll have been different when you'd only been married a year?
Gene Weingarten: I once noticed my father, at 75 years old, looking at a young woman. I called him on it. He said, "I may be old, but I'm not dead."
I am just stunned that anyone says a state of marriage or significant otherhood should prevent them from ogling someone.
Gene Weingarten: Okay. The poll. The results surprised me a little. I expected men to find behind-the-back criticism by a spouse to friends to be a much worse sin than women did. I, personally, consider it a betrayal. But the numbers were similar, and no one seems to be bothered by it all that much.
I think, predictably, men were generally less likely to define things as a marital infidelity than women were, particularly in those gray areas like hand-holding, back rubbing and whatnot. But the differences were not as sharp as I expected, particularly on the issue of a single passionate kiss. In talks I have given with Gina, there tends to be a real gender divide on this one, but not here. (Men see such a thing as romantic, more than sexual - the sort of way a man and women might acknowledge both their feeling for each other, ,and the fact that nothing is going to come of this relationship; let's say goodbye this way and think about what might have been. Women, um, do not.
Most interestingly, in this poll, there wasn't all that much different in actual BEHAVIOR. So either men are lying, or they are more liberal thinking, but equally moral in their personal behavior.
Nashville again: Ah, I think I read the question about mental undressing differently than you did. The phrase "mentally undress" to me implies a degree of lasciviousness, much more than just checking out a hot guy as he walks by.
And on that note, a word on sports and VPL: one of the highlights of my college career was getting seats four rows up from the players' benches at a University of Tennessee football game. My best friend and I spent the entire game speculating as to whether they wore anything under their -very- tight pants. We concluded that the answer was probably no, between the cup, the padding, and the, er, control provided by the pants. And yes, there was definite mental undressing going on, but I was unattached at the time.
Gene Weingarten: And ifyou had been attached, such ogling would be impermissible?
I JUST DO NOT GET THIS.
Washington, D.C.: Gene - While I have never cheated on a boyfriend (no illicit hand holding, kissing, other), I have - as Jimmy Carter said - lusted in my heart. Does this constitute a significant moral infidelity even though I have made a conscious decision not to act? And yo mama's so stupid she thought she saw Flash's vpl.
Gene Weingarten: I think it constitutes no moral infidelity whatsoever.
Salary Cap, WI: Assuming the Flash is the player you believe he would be, he would clearly command a monstrous salary, dwarfing even A-Rod's. They would probably not be able to keep Randy Johnson, Mussina, Jeter, or Rivera if the Flash signs a $12 or $13 million/per year contract. And does the Flash bat righty or lefty, which could impact his ability to bunt?
Gene Weingarten: The Flash throws right, bats left.
Momma, MIa,: Your mamma is so large, when she modeled and they put her photo on a billboard, they printed underneath her picture "acutal size".
washingtonpost.com: This is high quality stuff.
Gene Weingarten: It certainly is.
A few weeks ago someone submitted that the Simpsons lived in Kentucky and someone else said that they did not. I was watching the Simpsons last week (a rerun), the episode where Marge has all sugar banned from Springfield. Mr. Burns and the president of the sugar factory ask Homer to go "south of the border" for sugar. Homer asks Tenessee? I didn't know if this gave any more information that the Simpsons could in fact live in Kentucky, or in Southern Virginia as these are the only two states that border Tenessee to the north. Just my two cents!
washingtonpost.com: But that totally doesn't matter. From episode to episode, the surrounding territories change. Springfield has a port and beaches -- so you'd think it borders the ocean. But it has also had Alpine-like mountains close-by, desert terrain... it's like the villian's castle in "Krull" -- it seems to rise at a new site every episode.
Silver Spring, Md.: Question 13 Clearly, this poll is all about question 13. Many of us think that marital infidelity equals having some kind of romantic/sexual activity outside the marriage. But question 13 highlights for us that there are other ways to betray our vows. This is a very good poll.
I answered yes on question 13. I have never done this, and never would. To me it signifies a far greater betrayal of a spouse than MANY of the things above it.
Clearly, I am in the huge minority here, with you. (I expected a significant male-female split here, but no.)
Weeke, ND: I spent the past weekend with my girlfriend and her parents. At one point, my girlfriend's father (after a few beers) tells a crass joke about bars which suggest "liquor" in the front and "poker" in the back. He finds this funny, and the Father and I laugh. However, my girlfriend and her mother both sternly note the inappropriateness of the joke, especially in my company. I respond that I thought it was very funny, and get an approval nod from the father -- but slight head shaking from both the girlfriend and mother.
Was my approval of the joke a good decision or bad decision?
Gene Weingarten: A very good decision, even if you were offended. There is nothing to be gained by creating strain over something that is over and done with. What you said was classy, whether or not you meant it.
College Park, Md.: I have a girl's name that has been taken over by boys. Kyle. My friend (a 30 something girl) is named Kyle. Now there are quite a few little Kyle's running around... all boys. Yes it is still the rarity.
Gene Weingarten: No no no no. You are too young to understand this. Kyle was always a boy's name. Your parents stole it.
Gene Weingarten: In fact, you are not too old, considering the Kyle character in South Park.
Pat the Perfect: Re: "Cosmo's," as in drinks that may be imbibed by someone with VPL: Obviously the apostrophe didn't help the poster to read it more easily. I'd either figure it's safe, since it's not preceded by "the," to assume people will not conjure up Carl Sagan; or spell the thing out.
Our style at The Post is to add an apostrophe to designate a plural only for the plurals of single letters (e.g., I got two A's on my report card). C'mon, Liz, even the Flash is more interesting than punctuation! Maybe you can satisfy both camps and call him the Dash.
Gene Weingarten: We also say the O's, right? I got that right in the intro, yes? Otherwise it looks like Os, god of bones, or whatever.
To the poster who thinks VPL is trashy: Hey if you have switched to thongs to avoid trashy VPL, wait until you reach a certain age and the junk in your trunk gets a little dimply, if you know what I mean. Now thats trashy.
(Did Chatwoman just resign on having to read that?)
Gene Weingarten: Junk in your trunk! Wow.
Yankee Flash: I think the best part about having the Flash on the roster would be the potential for deviant behavior...like suddenly Johnny Damon finds a chunk of his man-mane missing, or Millar's uniform mysteriously changes to the Red Sux...
Au Contraire: Gene: "time travel does not permit anything but the corporeal body."
Wrongo. In "Back to the Future," Marty brought a video recorder and landed in his down vest. In "Kate & Leopold," the boyfriend brings a camera.
I think the rules of time travel are: whatever you can shove in your pockets, carry in a backpack, or fit in your deLorean can go with you.
The same rules do not apply to death, in which case you do arrive naked.
Gene Weingarten: Thank you for sharing this important information.
OKC, OK: Last week you fantasized about going back in time to somehow stop the 9/11 attacks. Be careful what you wish for! These headlines would probably have followed:
Student Pilots Nabbed, Claim 'Racial Profiling';
ACLU Readies Massive Suit Against Weingarten
Anti-Weingarten Campaign; Civil Rights Suit
Seeks $500 Million in Damages from Humorist
OJ Defense Team Rallies to Student Pilot Cause;
'Little Bitty Knives Won't Take No Lives'
PLO Calls Weingarten 'Zionist Stooge,'
Threatens Rushdie Fate - Columnist in Hiding
Liberal Judge Frees Student Pilots, Returns Knives;
All Will Get Free Air Tickets and Apology
Michael Moore Stalking Weingarten with Camera;
Jesse Jackson Denounces Post Writer As 'Racist'
Weingarten Once Told Camel, Brassiere, Mucous Jokes, Probe Reveals;
Chatwoman Will Testify for State in Looming Criminal Libel Trial
Under Increasing Pressure, Post Fires Humor Writer;
Requires Diversity Training As Demonstrators Ring Building
NY Times Editorial: It's All Bush's Fault
Poll: I would be interested in knowing how both sexes would have responded to another item in the first list: pornography. As in, is browsing porno on the net-buying adult magazines-going to strip clubs-etc "cheating?"
An article in the new PSYCHOLOGY TODAY stated that most women think it IS cheating, while most men don't.
P.S. This was a major issue in the breakup of my own marriage.
Gene Weingarten: Ah, yes. I should have included this. Hax has dealt with this many, many times in her chats.
I think it is a problem if it is interfering with the intimacy between the man and woman. And I suppose the mere fact that it is really bothering the woman suggests it is interfering with the intimacy. So, I would say if it has become an issue, it is a legitimate issue. If you see what I am saying.
I do not see it, however, as a "marital infidelity."
I find it interesting that you took umbrage (PtheP, why does one "take" umbrage) at this millionaire moron in BtB. You of all people should know the idiot quotient in this country. Why did HE get you going?
Gene Weingarten: Because his book, in my opinion, is hurting particularly vulnerable people.
Also, I believe you misused umbrage. I think that implies taking PERSONAL offense.
Cabin John, Md.: Gene, I am a 43-year-old male, and for reasons that I cannot explain, I just about always take off my glasses when I poop. Even if I have something to read. What is wrong with me?
Gene Weingarten: I do, too. But that is because I read better with my glasses off. What you are describing is plainly weird.
New York, N.Y.: Did I hallucinate this, or did Mutts have an actual joke on Sunday?
washingtonpost.com: Mutts , ( Sept. 25 )
Diabetes: I'm surprised you didn't catch this Gene. Diabetes is certainly not an autoimmune disease.
Gene Weingarten: Right, right. Hey, I do this fast.
Washington, D.C.: Re: ogling = infidelity.
My wife's opinion on this is that ogling = desire and that desire is cheating. An impure thought is just as bad as an unfaithful act. Of course she also believes that nearly all men would cheat if there was a 100 percent chance that they could get away with it.
And yet she ogles. Go figure!
Gene Weingarten: I believe, that for most men, the fear of not getting away with it is not the reason they don't cheat. It may be why most people don't steal. But not cheating is, I believe, rooted in a central morality, and in love.
Boys names: My Aunt and Uncle tried 4 times to have a son. Result: 4 daughters, Robin, Chris, Mike and Dana.
VPL: I've been polling my male friends about VPL since reading about it here. Not one of them finds VPL alluring. We are all late 20s - late 30s; I guess they'd be classified as yuppies if it matters. One guy said the main reason he finds VPL unattractive is because most of the women who HAVE VPL tend to be of the dumpier type. I have to agree. In general, attractive, fit women wear thongs. IN GENERAL! I know many of the self-proclaimed hot women who post here will disagree and say they are the exception.
Gene Weingarten: For the umpty umpth time, we are discussing VPL in the context of a woman who is otherwise attractive to the ogler. Okay? Woman you find hot: VPL or no VPL? I contend most men opt for the former.
Mojave, Calif.: My answer for number 13 does change if the confiding spouse is female, and after mulling it over I still don't know whether my reason is legitimate or not. I have close friends of both genders; in fact, I've had more close male friends than female. (I am female.) But over time I've found that guys just are not as good at respecting confidences -- you have to explicitly tell them something is not to be repeated, and even then they're prone to forgetting. They don't mean any harm, but somehow it just doesn't register. With women, you don't even need to tell them something is in confidence unless it's a thing you wouldn't normally keep quiet (like you're getting married but don't want your coworkers to know yet).
It's a stereotype that women are more aware of relationships and better at them, but it's also true as a generalization. It may be training rather than nature, and so it may change, but for right now, it's true. So it seems more safe for me if a woman is confiding in another woman. If it's a man confiding in another man, the other man is more likely to treat the confidence carelessly, and repeat it. No one wants their private pains being treated as casual banter. If my husband confides in Joe-Bob, that's uncomfortable, but if Joe-Bob then blabs to his family and his beer buddies, that's much worse.
Gene Weingarten: I think your second assumption is all wrong. I think men are more likely to hold such a secret.
I believe I have never talked to a friend about my wife in a significantly negative way. I would be more upset if my wife criticized me in a humiliating way to someone else than if she cheated on me.
Falling George: I just discovered that I can use my mouse button to maneuver George. I didn't pick p on that with the falling lady, but George fell into a position where he was motionless so I tried it. So now I'm trying to shake some sense into him.
Gene Weingarten: Impossible. Sorry. Like the guy on the screen, he appears to be brain dead.
Alexandria, Va.: Why does Liz restrict what you see? What if there's a really good unprintable joke in the queue? Wouldn't you want to read it even if you couldn't share it?
Gene Weingarten: I get to look at the detritus after the chat. Liz is good that way.
She restricts what I see because if she didn't I would be overwhelmed by questions, and unable to focus. She does a good job at this.
Bethesda, Md.: The question of whether I dress for men or other women is an interesting one, but it's not really relevant to the VPL question. Yes, I like to look nice, but that doesn't mean I dress with an eye to people staring at my ass and fantasizing about its shape. Therefore, I wear thongs. BECAUSE men like VPL.
Gene Weingarten: Understood. You are punishing us for being men. Understood. We accept the punishmnt. Can I have another, ma'am?
Krull: Liz, I bow to you. That Krull reference was off the charts.
What would Gina say?: So, if eating off an opposite-sex friend's plate is infidelity, and cheating on your partner, what on earth did Gina do after snarfing off your plate?
Have a tearful discussion about boundaries and respect with her husband?
Allow her husband to either eat off another woman's plate, or have sex with the other woman?
And what's more, would she ever do it again?
Did it ever occur to her that if she could eat off your plate, and you didn't mind, and her husband didn't mind, and your wife didn't mind, and y'all didn't rip each other's clothes off right there in the restaurant and have sexual relations on the floor in the bread crumbs, and she could still love and remain committed to her husband that, quite possibly, this Isn't Cheating?
Gene Weingarten: What we did, actually, was discuss this in the column.
Alexandria, Va.: Dissing a SO behind the back would be like dissing a family member. Even if you don't like them you're still obligated to thrash anybody who talks crap about them.
Gene Weingarten: Maybe I am like a mafioso. I think you just don't go against The Family. You don't never do that, see?
Women be gossip, IN: Seriously? This female thinks other female types keep secrets??? I want to meet her friends - I am forever telling my guy friends stuff that my female friends would not hear, b/c they can't resist the temptation of "Telling The Story." Guys could honestly not care less what Cindy said about Marsha's boyfriend...plus they're probably not listening anyway...
Gene Weingarten: Precisely. Exactly my point.
Baltimore, Md.: OK, Gene --
Now that the chat is close to wrapping up, might I suggest that you take a step back and admit that CHATWOMAN WAS RIGHT? This has been, far and away, the most boring chat on record. You've proved your point, all right (in a "nanny, nanny, boo-boo" kinda way), but in the process amply demonstrated to the world why Chatwoman cares (and is oh-so-needed) in the first place. Please, please, can we go back to normal next week?
Gene Weingarten: Okay. Well. Let me point out that this terrible, dreadful, boring chat has now received more postings than any chat in the history of regular chats, by a factor of about 25%. The record will likely never be broken.
See you next week, same time same place. Check for updates, which will break the five-subject mold.
Gene Weingarten: Two important updates from yesterday's chat.
First, several doctors, including at least one endocrinologist, pointed out that I should not have admitted error in having accepted a definition of diabetes as an auto-immune disease. Diabetes 1 -- commonly called childhood-onset diabetes -- is, indeed, an auto-immune disease. The body prevents itself from manufacturing insulin. Adult-onset diabetes is not autoimmune.
And secondly, it was not until after the chat that I read the entirety of the column by Lisa Chun in the VCU Times, the one that appeared to be slamming me and Dave Barry as crappy columnists.
When you read the whole thing in context, it is pretty clearly satirical, and rather clever and nicely done. Ms. Chun, I think, was not seriously arguing that "enjoyable" writing is bad.
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.: Belated VPL question: What is it with the tags?
With women's undies getting smaller and smaller, sometimes the tiny tag looms very large in proportion. And yet the tag stays on. Why not cut them off, girls?
Gene Weingarten: Good question. I have notice this, too. What about it, ladies?
Alexandria, Va.: With respect to mentally undressing people, I am a woman and I technically don't do that. I will check out a hot guy and think hubba, hubba, but it doesn't progress to the point of actually imagining them naked. Maybe men imagine women naked but women don't do the same to men, but the hubba hubba is there in both circumstances.
Gene Weingarten: I think, sexually, women are simply not visual. You are relational. In your sexual desires you are deep and complex and, overall, earnest and intelligent. So if you looked at, say, Derek Jeter, you guys would check him out, in general, and think "Wouldn't it be great to, like, see him across the table from me in a fancy French Restaurant, in a tuxedo, gently backlit, while he was holding my hand and telling me why I was the only woman he wanted, in a respectful fashion, yet one that clearly indicated he wanted to take me, savagely, but in a respectful-savage way."
Men might look at, say, Scarlett Johanssen, But they would look at her exactly as the director looked at her in the first five minutes of "Lost in Translation" -- as an arse, contained by panties.
Visible Supporters Line: I was once given free tickets to the Syracuse Ballet. They were in the front row. I told my friend afterwards that it was very distracting for me (a female) to be looking up at the men in their white tights with their very visible "ballet belts" (kind of a jock strap/thong underwear). He agreed with me. But he's gay. So, do guy men check out VPL's in other men?
Gene Weingarten: Yes, guys do this all the time, right after observing the precise formation that pigs fly in.
Silver Spring, Md.: HELLO?!? Flash is a HERO. Can't play for the Yankees. You want the Penguin or something.
Gene Weingarten: Oh, so we have to go for the Nemesis, eh? Well, not the penguin. He smokes cigars, waddles, and is a physical wreck.
My son advises me to go for The Phoenix from the X-Men. She clouds men's minds. She can simply see to it that the opposing team never catches a ball. Invaluable.
Gene Weingarten: Though Dan does point out that she might be hard to manage. She apparently has problems with Authority.
Gene Weingarten: We are in receipt of this important update response by Jennifer Adams:
"With women's undies getting smaller and smaller, sometimes the tiny tag looms very large in proportion. And yet the tag stays on. Why not cut them off, girls?"
Easy! Because the evil undie manufacturing collaborative (or, the EUMC) thinks it is a great idea to attach these tags by sandwiching them right into the seam. Sometimes, they even reinforce them with heavier thread, or plasticky thread. Then, when you go to rip the tag out, you rip a nice big hole in your brand new undies. Another trick the EUMC likes to play is to make those tags out of the stiffest, most paper-like material available, so if you just cut the tag instead, you get nice crunchy, picky, itchy edges all along the tag.
Hallelujah for the companies that are starting to just print the tag information right on the fabric of the undies.
Earth II: I think for the Flash to run around the world and check out his own butt for VPL, he'd have to be running faster than the speed of light. In other words, he'd have to make it all the way around the planet minus, say, three feet in the time it takes the photons bouncing off his backside to travel the three feet to where his eyes now are. (Or, he could just spin around real quick -- why take the long route?). However he does it, to get his eyes to the right point before the photons got there would require moving faster than the photons. If he were wearing a watch when he did this, and relied on it to set other clocks, all his clocks would be wrong, due to the effects of relativity. This would cause your mama to be late for all her appointments, and she would get so mad she would poop.
Gene Weingarten: Sorry, but this made me laugh. So now you are reading it.
Alexandria, Va.: Re: Your momma
I once had a friend who, invariably every Monday would ask me, "So what did you do this weekend?" And my answer was always the same. "Your mom."
Gene Weingarten: Oooh, that's really good. Unfortunately, I find that the obnoxious question usually is, "Did you have a good weekend?"
I guess I could just say, "Yes, I did. I porked your mom."
It lacks the elegant wordplay, I admit.
Question 13: Suppose my husband had bad potty etiquette, and I shared it with him and complained to a girlfriend. Is that marital infidelity?
My grandfather married us, and he said "Never say anything about your spouse that you wouldn't say in his/her presence." If I'm doing that and still confiding in a friend, is it marital infidelity?
Gene Weingarten: Yes, it is.
Several posters -- all women -- have challenged me on this issue. They claim you can SAVE marriages by talking about them to your friends, getting advice on how to deal with situations, etc.
I am pretty creeped out by this. I would not want my wife to ask her friends what their advice is about how to deal with my insistence that she wear clown pants and a false mustache in bed. I would want my wife to discuss it with me. Perhaps we coud compromise; eliminate the mustache, or something.
I believe that when you are in a committed relationship, it means that you and SO are each other's closest friend and confidant.
I seem to be in a minority here.
Tired of seeing husband pee: Okay, not enough potty talk. How do I get my husband to close the bathroom door when he pees? It bother me and our two sons.
Gene Weingarten: See, now here is a good example: You TALK to him, first, which I am guessing you have done already, and he has ignored you.
That is not good, but it just means more talking is necessary. I always advise women that they have enormous power in such negotiations. Read Lysistrata.
Germantown, Md.: Here's a new word for Kevin Trudeau:
Backpfeifengesicht: a face that cries out for a fist in it. (German)
Gene Weingarten: I hope this is real, because it is a beautiful word.
Silver Spring, Md.: To Arlington, Va.: Keep hiding those VPLs. Most men do NOT like them. Gene is very ardent that they are sexy which may make it seem like he speaks for all men. He does not. Gene is an idiot and not at all manly.
Gene Weingarten: I am not an idiot.
Downtown Washington, D.C.: I would be interested to hear the male-female divide on the use of the work bathroom to, ahem, poop. I find it unseemly to subject one's coworkers to this (sitting three feet from them while pretending I'm completely alone feels bizarre), and find myself making repeated trips to the restroom in search of a complete vacancy. Or even waiting until the end of the day, when I can utilize the home toilet advantage.
As you've no doubt ascertained, I am a woman. My husband tells me I'm completely neurotic. I tell him almost all women do this (I say "almost" because there are definitely women who don't follow this rule in my workplace. They skeeve me out.)
Gene Weingarten: So this is not a theoretical dispute for you? You possess the requisite control?
I'm sorry, but I think you are unusually sensitive in this matter. Then again, I am not a female. Does this lady have any support out there?
Washington, D.C.: I have never noticed VPL on a baseball player, though I have looked attentively -- almost scientifically, if there weren't so much lust involved.
I have, however, observed that either (a) baseball players have by far the nicest legs and butts of all professional sportsmen or (b) baseball pants -- short or long -- are the most flattering legwear a man c
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Post columnist Gene Weingarten answers your questions about his column, "Below the Beltway," and more. Funny? You should ask.
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Poor Women's 'Magical Outlook'
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Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas's new book, "Promises I Can Keep," explains -- in their subjects' own words -- why so many poor women opt for single motherhood.
It's not that they don't believe in marriage, or don't want it for themselves. They "delay" marriage until they think they have a reasonable shot at making it work. What Edin and Kefalas, both Philadelphia sociologists, found in their five-year study of 162 poor black, white and Puerto Rican single mothers is a near total disconnect between marriage and motherhood.
Unlike earlier generations, they don't look to marriage to give their children "a name" or for economic stability; they see it as a crowning achievement -- something to look forward to after they have their children, decent jobs and a house of their own. To marry earlier, they insist, is to leave themselves prey to the controlling and abusive men who are available to them in their inner-city Philadelphia and Camden, N.J., neighborhoods.
Meanwhile, Maggie Gallagher has produced an analysis of recent research on family structure and delinquency that concludes that -- after controlling for race, income and education -- boys who grow up without fathers are several times more likely to end up in jail. Earlier studies, says Gallagher, who is president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, show that children raised outside marriage are more prone to poverty, substance abuse, school failure, delinquency and adult crime.
Can the young women of "Promises" be serious about placing marriage in such high esteem that they forgo it? Don't they understand that the script they've written for themselves may not play out so well for their children?
I recalled what William Galston, a University of Maryland professor of public policy, once called his "favorite statistic": that finishing high school, reaching age 21 and getting married before having the first child dramatically reduces the odds that the child will experience poverty.
So, I wondered, what does he make of the "Promises" findings?
"If I were a woman in a community like the one they describe, and the pool of men I was looking at involved dropouts with criminal records and abusive patterns, I wouldn't marry either. But that omits the prior question: Why would I allow such a man to impregnate me?"
In short, it isn't simply the decoupling of marriage from children, he said, but the decoupling of the decision to have a child from the rest of your life.
"I'm not surprised by the finding that these young women place a high value on marriage," Galston told me. "The poor do not differ from the rest of America in their aspirations. They want college, a profession, marriage, a house with a picket fence. What distinguishes them is some combination of opportunity and concrete steps from their current reality to their future dream. Basically, what these women have is a magical outlook on life."
Galston's "magical outlook" aptly describes a phenomenon I've long observed but never named. I've asked young men where they expect to be 10 years hence, and their earnest expectations include "nice job, nice wife, nice car, nice crib" -- though nothing they are doing or planning puts them on track to achieve those goals. They are less aspirations than hopes.
"The poor don't need their consciousness raised as to what a good life looks like," Galston says. "They may have a pretty good idea of what they want 'way down the road,' but they don't know what to do next .
"There are things you don't learn in a classroom, and if your circumstances aren't rich in the sort of input you need, you may not learn them at all. Unless you have a home where these things are specifically talked about and reinforced, or a mentor or guide of some sort, you may not be able to figure out where the road is, let alone how to take it, or what direction."
We're a long way from marriage -- but maybe not so far after all. Hear Galston again:
"If I could raise a magic wand, by eighth grade, every rising ninth-grader would be attached to an adult who understands that young person and the life forces that might propel that young person forward. I'm not talking about some warm, fuzzy bond, I mean someone to help the young person answer that question that the middle class have largely figured out: What do I do next?"
Are the schools the best place to make these attachments?
Galston answers with a question: "Who else can?"
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Poor women delay marriage because they value it, but opt for single motherhood in the meantime. Don't they understand that the script they've written for themselves may not play out so well for their children?
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The Next Nominee
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WITH JUDGE JOHN G. Roberts Jr. all but certain to be confirmed as chief justice of the United States, attention shifts to the question of who will replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In terms of the left-right balance of the court, this matters more than President Bush's replacement of one conservative chief justice with another. But in making his second nomination, Mr. Bush faces an additional complication: diversity. The president has never made a secret of his desire to put the first Hispanic on the high court, while another male nominee would leave only one woman among the nine justices. The White House's concerns are legitimate: The court is not a representative institution, but it shouldn't be parade of white men either. Finding a nominee who adds diversity to the court while at the same time satisfying Mr. Bush's base and maximizing support from across the political spectrum is tricky.
Garnering broad support remains a critical goal. The five Democrats who opposed Judge Roberts in last week's Judiciary Committee vote raised doubt about whether they would support any conservative. Mr. Bush can't change that. He can, however, and should send to the Senate another nominee who offers no grounds for reasonable opposition.
The first criterion on which he must insist is the highest caliber of professional qualification. Particularly following the Roberts nomination, it would be a glaring mistake to choose the second nominee for narrowly ideological reasons or personal political loyalty.
A second important factor is temperament. One reason Judge Roberts seems so different from conservative justices such as Antonin Scalia is that he does not project a desire to use the bench to wage a war for the future of American society. Rather, he portrays the court as a place to resolve disputes between parties that cannot do so on their own. Mr. Bush should once again avoid a nominee who displays a grandiose vision of the judicial function. Similarly, nominees who display a commitment to precedent are far less threatening to those who disagree with them than ones who appear eager to overturn decisions with which they disagree. Justice Clarence Thomas is the court's most radical justice precisely because of his blithe willingness to revisit holdings that are decades old.
Mr. Bush has often said that he seeks judges who will interpret the Constitution strictly. Fidelity to the Constitution as written can be an honorable position or another guise for mandating one's own preferences from the bench. A nominee with a history of bending an articulated judicial philosophy for claims he or she finds politically congenial will raise suspicions; a nominee who has been a straight shooter on the law should be easier for a wide swath of American society to accept.
There is no lack of strongly qualified nominees who would add diversity to the court while honoring President Bush's oft-repeated insistence on justices who will not legislate from the bench. Such nominees are also the likeliest to win confirmation without a bitter fight. At first glance, D.C. appellate lawyer Maureen E. Mahoney, former deputy attorney general Larry D. Thompson and appeals court judge José Cabranes, for example, all appear worthy of serious consideration. Judging from some of the candidates reportedly being considered, however, the White House appears tempted to sacrifice both quality and breadth of potential support in order to push the court to the right. That would be an unfortunate move.
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The Supreme Court is not a representative institution, but it shouldn't be parade of white men either. There is no lack of strongly qualified nominees who would add diversity to the court while honoring President Bush's other requirements.
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Buying Support in Latin America
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Thanks to the United Nations General Assembly, the presidents of three big South American countries visited the United States simultaneously this month. Two are close U.S. allies who, through the diligent pursuit of free-market policies, have overseen impressive economic growth and a reduction of poverty in their nations. The other is a self-declared enemy of Washington who, despite enjoying an extraordinary bonanza of oil revenue, has managed to increase the poor population in his country by a quarter.
Chances are you heard about only one of these guys. Hugo Chavez, the "revolutionary" president of Venezuela, cut a flamboyant swath through New York, touring Harlem and the Bronx, chatting with Ted Koppel, basking in the applause of the General Assembly for his hyperbolic denunciations of American "imperialism" and capitalism.
By contrast, Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Alejandro Toledo of Peru passed through New York and Washington with barely a ripple. Not only that, they didn't really want to be noticed. True, both agreed to meet with editors and reporters of The Post. But neither one was willing to speak publicly about the biggest development in Latin America in years. That is, of course, the increasingly conspicuous emergence of Chavez as the political and ideological successor to Fidel Castro, and his aggressive attempt to succeed where Castro failed in constructing an anti-American alliance.
It's not that Uribe and Toledo, like the left-wing leaders of Brazil and Argentina, secretly sympathize with Chavez: They don't. Toledo, once a victim of Alberto Fujimori's Peruvian dictatorship-in-the-shape-of-democracy, can hardly admire Chavez's similar destruction of Venezuela's political freedom. Uribe fights a leftist guerrilla movement created with Castro's help decades ago and now backed by Chavez, who granted asylum and even citizenship to one of its top leaders.
Still, Uribe refused to say anything for publication about Chavez. Toledo doggedly limited himself to the new formula of the Organization of American States: "It's not enough to be elected democratically; it's also indispensable to govern democratically." He also let slip: "If I had as much money from oil as President Chavez, the story would be different."
What's striking about all this is not Chavez's New York antics -- which were copied almost exactly from U.N. appearances by Castro -- but the silence and seeming demoralization of those Latin leaders who have stuck with the "Washington consensus" of free markets and democratic politics. By any reasonable measure, both Uribe and Toledo have succeeded: Their economies are growing rapidly, exports and foreign investment are way up, and extreme poverty is down.
In Peru and Colombia, the number of people living on less than $2 a day under Toledo and Uribe stands at 54 and 52 percent, respectively. In Chavez's Venezuela, the rate has risen from 43 percent in 1999, the year he took office, to 53 percent last year, according to government statistics. During this same period Venezuelan oil revenue, which makes up most of the government's income, roughly doubled. Yet Chavez's claim to be the champion of Latin America's dispossessed goes unchallenged by his peers.
How could this be? Partly, of course, Chavez successfully mines the populism and anti-Americanism that is a perpetual undercurrent in Latin American politics and that is largely blind to results. He's a better politician than the sober, stern Uribe, and certainly more so than Toledo, whose chronically unpresidential (if harmless) behavior has given him the lowest popularity rating of any Latin leader.
But Toledo's muttered aside also points to a critical difference: Chavez is literally buying the support of his neighbors. With each uptick in oil prices, his giveaways -- once limited to Cuba -- increase. He provides subsidized oil for 13 Caribbean countries and promises Brazil a new refinery; he bought $538 million of Argentina's crushing foreign debt. He filled in for Ecuador, a fellow oil producer, when it was unable to export for a few days. A samba school in Rio de Janeiro won his patronage. In short, anyone in Latin America seeking a handout these days looks to Caracas.
That's why when Uribe and Toledo did speak about Venezuela, to their contacts in Congress and the Bush administration, the message was a simple one: Stop talking about Chavez, and start competing with him. Chavez-bashing, whether by Pat Robertson or Donald Rumsfeld, only sends his poll numbers soaring; meanwhile, say the Latin presidents, hard-pressed leaders are wondering if Washington has anything that matches Chavez's largesse. The opportunities to compete are readily available. There is, for example, an Andean free-trade agreement with the United States that the two presidents would like to wrap up by the end of October.
Their pitch would be more convincing if they were willing to stand up against Chavez's breach of democratic norms and interference in other countries, both violations of regional charters. But they also have a point: The Bush administration would have a lot more impact if it behaved as if the United States, rather than Venezuela, was the hemisphere's economic leader.
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Hugo Chavez's claim to be the champion of Latin America's dispossessed goes unchallenged by his peers, despite Venezuela's rising poverty rate. One reason? Chavez is buying the support of his neighbors.
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Rita Spares Cities, Devastates Rural Areas
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BEAUMONT, Tex., Sept. 25 -- Hurricane Rita's floodwaters receded Sunday along the Texas-Louisiana coastline, revealing devastated rural communities but lighter-than-expected damage to major population centers and to vital energy facilities in the area.
After the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina, which since it struck in late August has killed more than 1,000, displaced hundreds of thousands and is forecast to cost the federal government alone about $200 billion, Rita's impact was closer to that of other major hurricanes. Most of the more than 3 million people who evacuated in advance of the storm were preparing to return home. Costs were put in the low billions of dollars and only two deaths were attributed to the storm.
Still, hundreds of thousands of people were told they could not return to their homes in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana because water, power, sewage and emergency services will not be restored for weeks, authorities said. Police blocked exits off interstate highways leading to Beaumont, which once held 110,000 people but is now largely a ghost town.
Rita hit the United States early Saturday with winds of 120 mph, bringing up to a foot of rain and a 15-foot storm surge. It caused the greatest harm in less-populated areas of Louisiana and Texas, near this city and Port Arthur. About 2 million people overall lost power.
In a speech on Sunday, Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Rita's "effects appear to be relatively modest" on economic growth. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said the storm was "not anywhere near as bad as we thought it was going to be." Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," he said oil platforms and refineries in the area are "in relatively good shape."
Perry, on CNN's "Late Edition," put the damage in his state at about $8 billion; that would rank Rita far behind Katrina in impact but still among the most damaging storms to hit the United States.
Rita may also lead to changes in government policy. Officials are reviewing urban evacuation plans after suffocating traffic blocked departures from Houston. President Bush suggested that Congress examine whether the military should play a larger role in reacting to domestic disasters.
At the edges of the storm, rainfall and high water worsened problems in New Orleans, where repairs to a temporary levee could not prevent parts of the city from flooding again. The Army Corps of Engineers dropped sandbags to plug the gap as officials tried to pump the latest floodwaters from the city. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who is leading the federal government's Katrina recovery efforts, said it could take until June to rebuild the levees.
In Baton Rouge, La., Bush was given what he called an "optimistic appraisal" of the New Orleans flood-control system. The president, who is expected to travel to the region on Tuesday for the seventh time since Katrina struck, cautioned people in Louisiana and Texas to heed state leaders' advice on when it was safe to return home. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the city will reopen to business owners and residents of the Algiers neighborhood starting Monday.
Houston, spared Rita's full wrath, slowly began to return to life on Sunday, as some of its 2 million residents returned. Perry urged an "orderly migration" back to Houston, after the enormous traffic jams that marred the evacuation of that city before the storm.
Officials attributed Rita's lesser impact to several factors. The storm did not produce the rainfall that had been predicted, and it missed urban areas such as Houston and Galveston, Tex. Also, residents in the stricken areas, with images of Katrina's devastation fresh in their minds, evacuated in large numbers; government agencies at all levels, anxious not to repeat the slow response to Katrina, quickly rescued the stranded and delivered relief supplies using airlifts and trucks.
R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said there was "absolutely phenomenal" coordination and preparation. He said many preparations went unneeded. Texas received 3.8 million liters of water, 193 truckloads of ice and 320,000 military meal rations, but "we've had minimal requests for some of those commodities," Paulison said. He said FEMA would move more water and ice to Louisiana.
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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The Trip Back Begins Better Than Evacuation
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HOUSTON, Sept. 25 -- For Ilya Lvovsky and his family, the ride out of town last week was a nightmare. The return home Sunday was a dream.
Their trip Wednesday to Austin to escape Hurricane Rita -- slightly less than 200 miles east of their Clear Lake City home -- turned into a 33-hour ordeal that averaged 6 mph, used up the two full tanks in their cars and their 20-gallon reserve and turned Lvovsky into a bold line-cutter at a gas station 60 miles outside Austin so that he could beat the shut-off time for the pumps.
"It was like one of those movies you see about what would happen if you have all these people in one place," he said. "It was unbelievable. It wasn't like an evacuation. It was an exodus."
But the trip home was more like what they expected. They arrived in 3 1/2 hours, averaging 65 mph. No need to fill up the cars en route. The 20-gallon reserve they bought in Austin arrived intact. "The return was excellent," said the tobacco company representative, 24.
Some of the estimated 2.5 million evacuees began trickling back home to Houston and surrounding Gulf Coast communities on Sunday. Despite intense scrutiny by local officials and media to see how drivers would fare during the reentry, there were no headline-grabbing incidents. Highways leading south and east into Houston and Harris County were buzzing with cars, but there were no bumper-to-bumper 200-mile backups. There were no overheated cars, no people pushing cars to conserve fuel and few, if any, cars abandoned along the service roads.
Whether residents were heeding the pleas of state and local officials to return according to a staggered three-day reentry plan was unclear. What was apparent was that at least for Sunday, residents managed to get home in Rita's aftermath with relative ease.
The reentry plan divided the city and county into three areas and asked residents to return voluntarily in shifts Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. "It looks to me like it's working," Houston Mayor Bill White said at a midday news conference.
But Lvovsky's family, which lives in a mandatory evacuation zone a couple of miles from the Johnson Space Center, was not supposed to return until Tuesday. They took their chances and decided to return home early on secondary state highways and not the major evacuation interstate route they took out of town. They were pleasantly surprised at how quickly they arrived back. "All these almost 3 million people that left -- are they not coming back yet?" Lvovsky said. "Or are they coming back at their own pace?"
In an attempt to prevent an immediate repopulation of the area and avoid massive traffic jams, schools, local government and court officials and some private employers announced over the weekend that they would remain closed Monday and perhaps Tuesday and Wednesday. But some workers were told to report to back immediately to get the huge metropolitan area back to normal. They included employees of area hospitals, other health care facilities and pharmacies; the two major airports; gasoline stations; grocery and convenience stores; and refineries. In particular, White made a televised appeal to the owners of gas stations, which largely remained shuttered in and around Houston.
"There is some fuel available in tanker trucks in the area," he said. "Your fellow citizens are counting on you, but you need to show up to work."
The state's failure to ensure adequate fuel along evacuation routes and delaying the opening of contra-flow lanes on interstate highways leading out of Houston -- along with residents' overwhelming desire to leave, whether or not they lived in a mandatory evacuation zone -- overwhelmed the highways Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in advance of Rita. As many as 18 hours before Rita struck the Texas coast near Louisiana early Saturday, the storm was forecast to be barreling toward Galveston and Houston as a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. Texans had the images of the death and destruction wrought just three weeks before by Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.
"If it hadn't been for Katrina, I don't think we would have gone," Lvovsky said. "It was crazy getting out. But I guess we'd rather be safe than sorry."
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Mayor to Allow Return, Gradually
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NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 25 -- Four weeks after Hurricane Katrina emptied this city of its 470,000 people, New Orleans remains a deserted shell, struggling to restore basic services, patch up tattered levees and pump out floodwaters as business owners and residents of the Algiers neighborhood prepared to return for a second time Monday.
Hurricane Rita pushed the New Orleans recovery effort back by about five days, Mayor C. Ray Nagin said. But he is determined to resume a reentry plan that federal officials have questioned as too ambitious, given the fragility of the city's utilities, hospitals and traffic controls.
"We want to bring New Orleans back," he said, acknowledging that the process will begin only with healthy, hardy adults. "We're talking about people who are mobile. We're not asking people to come back who have a lot of kids, a lot of senior citizens. That's going to be the reality of New Orleans moving forward."
After evacuating for Rita last week, crews trickled back into New Orleans on Sunday to find much of their work had been undone. In the wealthy Garden District, tree removal experts hauled away limbs and branches from streets that had been cleared. Utility trucks returned to reconnect power in the city's West Bank -- and body recovery resumed, although state officials said the Katrina death toll remained at 841.
Most significantly, teams from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers descended on the deep, wide Industrial Canal to repair temporary levees damaged by Rita. Working through the night Saturday, the Corps dropped 200 sandbags -- weighing between 3,000 pounds and 7,000 pounds -- into the largest breaks, spokesman Mitch Frazier said. It probably will take a week to pump out the lower Ninth Ward that was submerged for two weeks by Katrina and flooded again by Rita over the weekend. That would be faster than expected, as officials had projected it would take two weeks.
Even with those rapid repairs, the Corps does not expect the city's levee system to return to pre-Katrina levels until June.
With nearly two months remaining in hurricane season, "we should be eternally worried until the levee structure has been repaired to pre-Katrina heights," Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen said on CNN's "Late Edition."
This week, Nagin hopes to name a high-profile commission to oversee the reconstruction of a city that faces heart-wrenching decisions about whether to rebuild in neighborhoods that were underwater not once but twice.
"Some of these houses are going to be uninhabitable, but the public does not know that yet," Allen told "Fox News Sunday." "In my personal discussions with the mayor, I think he's desirous to have the public have a good appreciation for the condition of the city and then take next steps. That may not be explicitly stated, but that is my understanding."
Allen, named by President Bush to oversee the New Orleans recovery, publicly chastised Nagin a week ago when the mayor announced an ambitious plan to invite as many as 280,000 people back into the city over a week's time. This time, Nagin is pledging a more gradual approach.
"We will begin the reentry plan with business owners and residents of Algiers," he said Saturday. "Then we will stop, assess our progress and move on to the previously targeted Zip codes."
Even as Nagin pressed ahead, officials acknowledged that a severe financial crunch is affecting teachers, the district attorney's office, hospital workers and the police. Schools are not expected to reopen before January.
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Breast Cancer, Handedness Could Be Linked
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Are left-handed women at increased risk for breast cancer? A new study suggests that might be the case.
Cuno Uiterwaal of the University Medical Center in the Netherlands and colleagues examined the relationship between handedness and breast cancer in 12,178 healthy, middle-age women from Utrecht participating in a breast cancer screening study.
Between 1982 and 2000, the left-handed women in the study were more than twice as likely as right-handed women to develop breast cancer before going through menopause, the researchers found. The association held up even after the researchers took into account other factors, such as social and economic status, smoking habits, family history of breast cancer, and reproductive history.
Much more research is needed to explore whether the relationship is real and what may explain it. But the researchers speculated that left-handed women may be at risk for breast cancer because they were exposed to higher levels of certain hormones in the womb.
"The origin of the association may lie in intrauterine exposure to steroid hormones," they wrote in a paper published online yesterday by the British Medical Journal. Women exposed to the hormonal drug diethylstilbestrol, or DES, for example, when they were in the womb were more likely to be left-handed, they noted.
"Although the underlying mechanisms remain elusive, our results support the hypothesis that left-handedness is related to increased risk for breast cancer," they wrote.
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Are left-handed women at increased risk for breast cancer? A new study suggests that might be the case.
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DiMarco Delivers a Knockout
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There was a reason U.S. Captain Jack Nicklaus had placed Chris DiMarco in the anchor position for yesterday's 12 singles matches at the Presidents Cup. Who better to make a pressure-packed 15-foot putt to win the Cup on the 18th hole than DiMarco, a ferocious competitor who teamed splendidly with Phil Mickelson in going undefeated over the first three days of play.
Spurred by Nicklaus's confidence, DiMarco delivered the grandest triumph of his career, a dramatic 1-up decision over Australian Stuart Appleby that culminated a day of spellbinding theater and spectacular shot-making at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Gainesville. DiMarco's clutch putt delivered the winning point in the Americans' 18 1/2 -15 1/2 victory over an International team that has never prevailed in four attempts on American soil.
Nicklaus was the first to greet DiMarco with a Golden Bear hug in the middle of the green, and both men were teary in celebrating the first U.S. victory in team match-play competition in five years.
"I don't know why in the world they cared about winning one for an old man," Nicklaus said. "They needed to win one for themselves. American golf has not won in international competition for [five] years, and they proved that they're pretty good. . . . If I'm never involved in the game of golf again, it's not a bad way to end it. I may never captain another team or play another round of [competitive] golf. This is pretty special."
DiMarco set himself up for the victory with a stunning 9-iron out of the rough at the 18th.
"I thought I might whiff [the winning putt], I was so nervous," he said. "I just thought about two people out there, Fred [Couples] and the putt he made to beat Vijay [Singh, earlier in the day], and Captain Nicklaus. That was our whole goal this week -- to win it for him."
At Saturday's final team dinner, Nicklaus's wife, Barbara, told the players they had touched her and her husband's hearts all week, but that now it was time to settle the business left unfinished by the 17-17 tie two years ago in South Africa, the last time these two teams faced off. Couples also spoke Saturday night and choked up when he thanked Nicklaus for making him one of his two wild-card choices to make the team.
Couples repaid Nicklaus in kind yesterday. He had asked to be paired with his friend Singh, the man he beat on the same RTJ course to clinch the 1996 Presidents Cup with a birdie at No. 17. Yesterday, Couples made another vital birdie to win his match, 1 up, at the 18th hole with a putt a few feet longer than DiMarco's but along a similar right-to-left line. That birdie provided the U.S. team with a point few thought possible against Singh, the No. 2 player in the world.
"It was a great match," Couples said, adding that he had wanted to play Singh "because I like him. . . . I enjoy playing with him. You want to win because he's such a great player. I just figured I could lull him to sleep. I figured if I beat him, there might be a small golden rainbow out there, and I did."
There were other heroes, as the Americans maintained their streak of never having lost the singles competition in any of the six Presidents Cup competitions. They won seven of the 12 matches yesterday, and the half-point came in a tense duel between Mickelson and Argentina's Angel Cabrera. Those two finished tied after 18 holes and were on the first playoff hole when DiMarco rolled in the clinching putt. In accordance with the captain's agreement, it was determined that any match still on the course once the Cup was decided would end immediately, with each team given a half-point.
Mickelson actually thought he had clinched the Cup himself when he made his own tricky five-foot birdie putt at the 18th hole to tie his match against Cabrera. Mickelson assumed the match had ended at all square, thus providing the half-point necessary for an American victory. He did a hilarious double take when he shook the hand of European rules official Andy McFee on the 18th green and was told the match wasn't over until it was really over.
"Leave it to me to not read the rules," Mickelson said with a broad smile. "This was just a little different than we're used to, I guess. There are not many times in a player's career when you have a chance to have the Cup rest on your shoulders. It's fitting for Chris to win the Cup, but I still felt the pressure of having to make that putt. I'll take away a memory and a finish that I'll always remember."
Mickelson and DiMarco, who requested a pairing that likely will carry over to the Ryder Cup team next year, also will be remembered for not losing a match this week. DiMarco, playing in his second Presidents Cup, finished 4-0-1 and Mickelson was 3-0-2, a dramatic turnaround from his 0-5 performance in South Africa.
Tiger Woods suffered his first defeat in Presidents Cup singles when South Africa's Retief Goosen prevailed, 2 and 1. Goosen also ended the week at 4-0-1. Woods, who played most of the week with a sore rib cage, could barely lift his left arm in the latter stages of the match, but refused to use the injury as an excuse. Over his amateur and pro career, it was only his 13th defeat in 97 career singles matches.
"The last nine holes, it was giving me a little problem," Woods said. "I had my opportunities to take control of the match. I didn't do it. I didn't make the putts. Goose made a bunch of putts on me today, and consequently he won the match."
Jim Furyk, Woods's partner in earning 2 1/2 points in the team matches, had back problems earlier in the week. But he got stronger as the competition went on and added the 15th point with a 3-and-2 victory over Adam Scott. Couples beat Singh for the 16th point, and Davis Love III put the Americans on the brink of victory with his 4-and-3 destruction of Australian Nick O'Hern. Love had three birdies in his first five holes and was never in serious danger.
When Love completed his victory, only two matches were left on the course -- Mickelson-Cabrera and DiMarco-Appleby -- and thousands flocked from all around to watch the dramatic denouement. Even Gary Player, the International team captain, had to applaud DiMarco's effort in the end.
"That putt Chris made, I take my hat off to him," Player said. "What a day's golf."
Afterward, Nicklaus added that "Gary just said to me: 'Jack, this could not have been any better. You guys played hard. We played hard, it came right down to the last hole right where we wanted it to come down, and you guys did what you were supposed to do -- three guys birdied the 18th hole to win it.' "
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There was a reason U.S. Captain Jack Nicklaus had placed Chris DiMarco in the anchor position for yesterday's 12 singles matches at the Presidents Cup. Who better to make a pressure-packed 15-foot putt to win the Cup on the 18th hole than DiMarco, a ferocious competitor who teamed splendidly with...
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Patriots Lose Pieces, but Keep Playing Winning Part
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PITTSBURGH, Sept. 25 -- The New England Patriots have some early-season issues. They lost two key players to knee injuries Sunday after an offseason of defections. Coach Bill Belichick still is finding his way without his two most trusted sideline lieutenants, and the upcoming schedule is unyielding.
But they are still the kings of the NFL until some team proves otherwise, and the Pittsburgh Steelers weren't quite up to the task on an afternoon of high drama at Heinz Field. The Patriots turned to their old reliables in crunch time, riding the fourth-quarter exploits of quarterback Tom Brady and getting Adam Vinatieri's 43-yard field goal with one second remaining for a 23-20 triumph that ended the Steelers' regular season winning streak at 16 games.
"It was only a September win, but we're pretty happy with it," Vinatieri said. "Whenever we get a chance with some time left on the clock, it seems like we can get it done."
It looked like a brewing crisis when the Patriots, coming off a sloppy defeat at Carolina, faced a 13-7 deficit in the third quarter. They were staring at the possibility of taking a 1-2 record into upcoming games against the San Diego Chargers, Atlanta Falcons and Denver Broncos, and Belichick undoubtedly would have faced questions about life without departed assistant coaches Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis.
The Patriots (2-1) committed two first-half turnovers inside Pittsburgh's 10-yard line Sunday, and their defense, already depleted by the absences of cornerback Ty Law and linebacker Tedy Bruschi, was further weakened when safety Rodney Harrison suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury in the first quarter. Tackle Matt Light was helped off the field in the second quarter.
But they hung tough, as usual. Brady completed all 12 of his fourth-quarter passes on a day when he threw for 372 yards on 31-for-41 accuracy. Tailback Corey Dillon's seven-yard touchdown scamper with 10 1/2 minutes left gave the Patriots a 17-13 lead, and Vinatieri upped the advantage to 20-13 with a 35-yard field goal with just more than three minutes to play. Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, playing with an injured left shoulder, tied the score with his second touchdown pass of the day to wide receiver Hines Ward, sending the towel-waving crowd of 64,868 into delirium.
But the Steelers (2-1) made the mistake of leaving 1 minute 21 seconds on the clock for Brady, and his final three completions of the day set the stage for Vinatieri.
"They've run away with so many games, it's pretty much been over by the middle of the third quarter," Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel said of the Steelers. "That was our whole thing, to make it a football game -- keep it competitive and have a chance to win at the end. We handle those situations pretty well."
Roethlisberger suffered his first regular season defeat as an NFL starter; his only previous loss was to the Patriots in this stadium in last season's AFC title game. He completed only 12 of 28 passes for 216 yards Sunday, and Steelers tailback Willie Parker was limited to 55 rushing yards.
"You have to play a full 60 minutes to beat a team like that," Steelers linebacker James Farrior said. "They're the world champions, and they didn't get that way for nothing."
The Patriots got off to a good start on their opening drive of the game, which culminated with Dillon's four-yard touchdown run. But on the first play of the Steelers' next possession, Ward caught a pass from Roethlisberger in stride around the Pittsburgh 35-yard line and just kept going, outrunning cornerback Asante Samuel and safety Eugene Wilson for an 85-yard touchdown.
The misfortune came in big doses for the Patriots from there. The next time the Steelers had the ball, Harrison was moving into position to try to make a tackle on a running play when Pittsburgh wide receiver Cedrick Wilson was shoved by another player and fell onto the side of Harrison's left knee. The knee was bent inward, and it was immediately clear that the New England defense would have to replace another of its leaders. Light got hurt blocking on a second-quarter running play, leaving Belichick to put one rookie, tackle Nick Kaczur, next to another, guard Logan Mankins, on the left side of his offensive line.
On the drive before Light got hurt, the Patriots reached the Pittsburgh 6 but reserve tailback Kevin Faulk lost a fumble on a screen pass. In the final minute of the second quarter, they got a first down at the Pittsburgh 3. But a false-start penalty on Mankins pushed them back and Brady had a pass tipped into the air by defensive end Kimo von Oelhoffen and intercepted by safety Chris Hope. Vinatieri pulled a 53-yard field-goal try wide left to end the Patriots' opening drive of the third quarter.
Things weren't going much better for the Steelers, though. They took a 10-7 lead on place kicker Jeff Reed's 33-yard field goal in the first quarter. But they squandered a second-quarter chance for more points when wideout Antwaan Randle El, after a 49-yard catch and run, tried a lateral to Ward, who couldn't control the ball. Wilson fell on the fumble for the Patriots at the New England 11. Reed missed a 52-yard field goal attempt in the second quarter, ending his string of 22 consecutive successful field goals, moments after Roethlisberger was hurt when he was spun to the ground by linebacker Don Davis on an incompletion and landed on his left arm.
Roethlisberger had to be helped to his feet by the Steelers' trainers, and his left arm hung limply by his side as he walked off the field. But he didn't miss a snap. The Steelers increased their advantage to 13-7 when Reed connected on a 24-yard field goal after a third-quarter fumble by Faulk. Vinatieri got the Patriots to within 13-10 in the final seconds of the quarter with a 48-yard field goal.
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The Patriots rally in the fourth quarter to beat Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers, 23-20, on Adam Vinatieri's 43-yard field goal
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A Hazy New Day Awaits 'Nightline'
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"Nightline" as we know it is about to fade to black.
Gone will be the single-topic examination that has been the ABC program's signature for 25 years. Gone will be the single-anchor format once Ted Koppel steps down Nov. 22. And some of the correspondents and producers who built the program into a journalistic powerhouse will likely be gone, too.
"I'm absolutely committed to 'Nightline' remaining a serious, substantive show," says British journalist James Goldston, the new executive producer. " 'Nightline' has a unique place in American television journalism and it's important that should continue. Of course, we wish it to be an entertaining show, but the journalism comes first always."
The likely new anchors are White House correspondent Terry Moran and "PrimeTime" anchor Cynthia McFadden, who have had serious discussions with Goldston and would be based in Washington and New York, respectively. Another possible anchor is Martin Bashir, who made documentaries about Michael Jackson and Princess Diana, although he may wind up as a contributor.
Goldston made a presentation last week to Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC television, and ABC News President David Westin, among others, and got a tentative green light to pursue his vision of the show, say people familiar with the matter who declined to be named because no final decisions have been made.
Left in limbo, for the moment, are such "Nightline" veterans as Chris Bury, John Donvan and others. They have not been approached about the new program, although Goldston is expected to ask some to stay on. (Other correspondents could be shifted to the morning or evening shows depending on whether Charlie Gibson, Elizabeth Vargas or someone else is named to succeed Peter Jennings.)
Correspondent Dave Marash says he has "been disinvited to join the new 'Nightline' " and is disappointed because "who I am and what I do and how I do it have not changed in the 16 years I've been with 'Nightline.' "
Several producers are likely to join a new company being formed by Koppel and outgoing executive producer Tom Bettag, who don't plan to finalize a deal with another media outlet until they leave. The center of gravity for the Washington-based show is clearly shifting to New York, where Goldston lives and where he is seeking funding to hire more staff.
Goldston, who produced Britain's most popular public-affairs show from 2002 to 2004, as well as Bashir's 2003 documentary "Living With Michael Jackson," has maintained in meetings that he has no plans to dumb-down "Nightline." He has argued that the move toward shorter segments will allow more coverage of foreign news and has talked about projects such as spending a week in Iran.
But Goldston is not averse to more interviews with celebrities if these can be tied to larger issues. He will also emphasize edited, taped pieces in the belief that no one else has Koppel's facility for long interviews done without interruption.
The new "Nightline" has done a soft launch, under Goldston's supervision, by having Moran and McFadden host a number of three-topic programs on Mondays and Fridays. The leadoff piece is usually hard news, but there have also been segments on sportscaster Pat Summerall meeting the family of his liver donor; Christopher Reeve's widow developing lung cancer; the fashion industry discovering larger women; and Rickey Henderson's baseball comeback. Whether the wide-ranging approach will erode the uniqueness of "Nightline" remains to be seen.
When the media's biggest megastars gathered at Carnegie Hall last week, an uncomfortable question hung in the air: Were they bidding farewell to Peter Jennings or the kind of journalism he embodied as well?
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"Nightline" as we know it is about to fade to black. When the media's biggest megastars gathered at Carnegie Hall last week, an uncomfortable question hung in the air: Were they bidding farewell to Peter Jennings or the kind of journalism he embodied as well? It was no accident last week that the...
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Wear It Anywhere: The Capital Tee
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Darrell Delaney is ambling about Union Station one recent evening, trying to attract girls in his oversize, mass-produced, preshrunk cotton white T-shirt. It hangs on his 125-pound body like a fallen parachute. And it belongs to his mother, Darrell mumbles, when asked what "kind" of tee it is.
Ho-kay, one more time: Hanes, Luxe, Galaxy? "My mom's," the 13-year-old says, bowing his head and dipping his shoulder for a tag inspection, which reveals the name of an Australian company that specializes in plus-size women's clothing. Oh, snap!
When there is nothing else to wear, and nothing to prove, the white tee emerges -- fashion as anti-fashion. Tabula rasa of the street. Without logos, stripes or cartoon characters, it is remarkable for its complete blankness. It can be bought at Sears, or even at gas stations. Five for $20. Available in every season and size -- preferably XXXXL.
For all its plainness, the white T-shirt refuses to be ignored. A few years ago the street fad was Gucci, very gaudy. Then it was $300 retro sports jerseys that snuffed out life savings. Now, frugality: In a trend cheered on last summer by Dem Franchize Boyz' crunk ode "White Tees," the world is now seemingly filled with boys and men in the gigantic shrouds, billowing over baggy jeans and throwback Nikes.
It brings to mind 1990s West Coast rapper wear and it has found critics among both the fashion police and the actual baton-wielding deputies: Some law enforcement officials consider it the street uniform du jour for drug dealers, gang members and thieves, a criminal ensemble featured in maddeningly broad radio dispatches: The suspect was last seen wearing a white T-shirt and dark pants.
Or in police blotters, as accessory to a harebrained scheme -- "Two gunmen in a fast-food restaurant covered their faces with white T-shirts, struck an employee in the head . . ." Or as a coveted item: "Two males, one with a gun, approached a male unloading boxes of merchandise in an alley. A wallet and a box of white T-shirts were taken."
The bad rap on the classic tee has implicated adolescents. Earlier this year, school administrators in North Carolina handed a 10-day suspension to a white-teed student, charging that he violated the dress code prohibiting gang clothing. In Cleveland, a city council member complained to a local TV station in August about young men in oversize white tees "terrorizing" his neighborhood. (NewsChannel5 cuts to the clip of black teens strolling down a tree-shaded sidewalk.) The councilman then called on inner-city gas stations to stop selling the shirts.
For all the profiling and small-minded punishment, many white-T aficionados seem blissfully unaware. At Union Station, Darrell dallies away the evening with a handful of guy friends, each not appearing the least bit critical that he wore his mother's white T-shirt. It happens; other big white tees were dirty. Then the group leader squints and soon Darrell is turning his head in embarrassment.
"Look, stains," points out Marcus Stone, 18. "And there's a hole right there. I can spot 30 things on your shirt." They are mostly beige blemishes on a snow-white canvas. "Girls notice everything," he warns.
"I've always thought of the T-shirt as the Alpha and Omega of the fashion alphabet," Giorgio Armani wrote in an introduction to a 1996 book called "The White T."
"The creative universe begins with its essentiality, and, whatever path the imagination takes, ends with its purity. . . . I love the T-shirt as an anti-status symbol, putting rich and poor on the same level in a sheath of white cotton that cancels the distinctions of caste."
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Get style news headlines from The Washington Post, including entertainment news, comics, horoscopes, crossword, TV, Dear Abby. arts/theater, Sunday Source and weekend section. Washington Post columnists, movie/book reviews, Carolyn Hax, Tom Shales.
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At One With Nature
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Seven-year-old Christopher Hays is an early riser, perhaps because sunshine saturates his room each morning before school. One of the first things he sees upon waking is his 11-year-old sister, Emily, through the open "window" that links their bedrooms, right about where their heads rest. If he wakes up facing the opposite direction, he's greeted by a clothespinned wall of his and Emily's changing artwork. Right now, his Kids' Bill of Rights -- which, Christopher admits, isn't completely fair to adults -- hangs among a smattering of watercolors. Above him is what may appear to be a bunk bed but is actually a loft that joins Emily's room with his. A pulley-rigged basket -- his mother's idea -- dangles off the side and is used, he explains, to pass things up and down without having to climb the ladder each time.
If you were to assume Emily and Christopher are being raised to be creative, bright children, you'd be correct. But their parents, environmental architects Chris Hays and Allison Ewing, give some of the credit to this Charlottesville house, which they designed in 1998. "There's a series of strategies at play," explains Ewing. "Some of those affect how we live, others affect our general health, and others are the right thing to do because they affect the health of our habitat."
For Ewing and Hays, it's hard to separate what's good for the Earth from what's good for the household. "When we think of sustainability, we really expand the boundaries to include the ideas of com-munity -- at large, and also in the family," Ewing says.
To that end, the house is set up with open public spaces, promoting that most valuable commodity: family time. The kitchen sits one foot above the living and dining rooms, but because there are no walls between the three rooms, it feels like one space -- a design, Ewing says, "to enhance our 'familyness.'"
From the elevated kitchen, which functions as a traffic-control tower of sorts, Hays and Ewing can watch the children play in the living room or dining room, and even on the porch or in the yard. "This space has a connectivity with the outdoors through the deck and the views," Ewing says. That link is seamless; the wood on the deck has been stained to mimic the color of the living room floors. The result is that the outside feels like a part of the inside, even when it's too cold to venture beyond the door. In fact, Emily's favorite part of the house is the 600 feet of decking, which is home to a couple of swings and often becomes a scooter ramp for her and her friends.
Sure, this house is fun. But it's also taught the kids a few things. "I want to be a whatcha-callit architect," Christopher says. "A landscape architect," he explains, after his sister helps him find the right word. And Emily says she wants to be an inventor, as she verbally sketches one of her innovations: "A cap that goes on the pipe on the end of a car. It changes smog into energy, and then you take the cap off and put it in a special thing, and that's how you'd power your lights. It would help so we don't have that huge hole in the ozone."
Perhaps her inspiration came from the laundry list of green materials and technologies she's surrounded by every day (with almost as many acronyms as a government phone book): low VOC (volatile organic compound) paints, which are available at most big-box home stores and are much less toxic than standard products; wood treated with ACQ (alkaline copper quaternary), which does not contain the arsenic or chromium found in most other treated lumber; SIPs (structural insulated panels), which are used instead of regular framing, and provide excellent insulation and noise reduction; VAV (variable air volume) handlers, which save energy because they work with the thermostat to control the amount of air that comes out, as well as its temperature. The remaining wood in the house was certified, meaning it met forest-preservation guidelines set forth by the Forest Stewardship Council; or it was reclaimed from aban-doned factories in New York; or it was local Virginia cypress, which is naturally resistant to rotting and, because it was local, required less money and fuel to transport.
"We also used a lot of plywood and engineered products," Hays says. "So instead of solid wood, we're relying on products made up of thin layers of wood, which can be a much more efficient use of wood."
Hays and Ewing also focused on bringing in as much sunlight as possible. They extrapolated from research showing that children perform better in well-lit schools and designed the living room with two stories of windows on the south-facing wall, which let in enormous amounts of light even on an overcast day. And because of strategically placed horizontal louvers, which look like large shutter slats, sunshine is allowed in during the winter to provide heat (when the sun crosses the sky at a lower position), and then is blocked in the summer (when the sun is high), a use of sunlight known as passive solar heat.
The couple used environmentally friendly strategies outside as well. Christopher's favorite is the pond in the back yard, which, the day after it was established, was already home to a snapping turtle. Not long after that came a heron and a hawk, and dozens of other little critters. Runoff from the roof is routed into an underground channel that feeds a bed of irises, which filter out the toxins in the water.
Hays and Ewing designed this house for the young family they had at the time, but they knew that Emily and Christopher would inevitably want more privacy and that the house will need to grow along with them. For example, the window linking their bedrooms will need sliding privacy panels when Emily enters teenagerdom in a few years. Eventually, Hays and Ewing plan to extend the second floor over the living room, which would reduce the amount of light downstairs but provide the children with more square footage upstairs.
Change is afoot for Hays and Ewing as well. Until last year, they both worked at the architecture firm William McDonough & Partners, renowned for its environmentally minded designs. At that time, Hays left to start his own business in part of the house. Ewing recently left her position as a partner at McDonough and is joining him full time, in what will be known as Hays + Ewing Design Studio.
"The thing I really appreciate about working here is that everything is rolled into one," Hays says. "I can enjoy working away in the studio, and then connect . . . with the kids when they come home." This lifestyle takes him back to the years he and Ewing spent working for architect Renzo Piano in Italy. "Living there enforced the idea that you should enjoy what you do and not compartmentalize -- 'Oh this is work, and I do it 40 hours a week in an office building,'" he says. "It should be about enjoying yourself, not about getting through the workday."
First on the drawing board for Hays and Ewing is to design a "sustainable community" in their Woolen Mills neighborhood, named for the mill that thrived here in the mid-19th century.
This section of Charlottesville is infused with history but is dynamic enough that a modern aesthetic fits right in. "There's an interesting texture to this neighborhood," Hays says. "It's historical without being precious."
With several other architects, they bought 1.54 acres across the street from their own home, where they plan to build 10 similar houses: light-filled and reliant on recycled materials and passive solar heat.
"There's a real potential to do surgical interventions here. It won't change the neighborhood by any means, but it will start to give it new life," Ewing says. And so, the evolution continues.
Natalie Ermann Russell is a freelance writer living in Charlottesville.
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Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland home and garden news/headlines, including build/fix and furnishing/design, garden/patio tips. Resources and coupons for homes and gardens, DC, MD, VA contacts. Guides for organizing, cleaning, planting and caring.
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A Director's Cuts: The Samurai Savvy Of Hideo Gosha
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Those who think samurai think Kurosawa, which is fine. You won't get into trouble that way.
But it's just not enough. And it's not very adventurous.
For it turns out that no matter how great a filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was -- "The Seven Samurai" (1954) is certainly the best known of his many superb warrior-themed pictures -- he was but one of many directors drawn to the classic images of feudal Japan, the dazzling swordsmanship, the severe code of male behavior and obligation, the courage and the really cool haircuts. To focus on him is to miss so much. It's like focusing on John Ford as the only director of westerns.
To pursue the western analogy, consider this: Wouldn't you learn, really, more and faster about westerns if you studied a routine action director who worked hard and fast and professionally within the system, never got much attention, never thought of himself as a genius, was never a favorite of critics and cineastes , died quietly and whose films were then recognized as possessing a certain something, a fury, a vision, a toughness that was unforgettable?
You would, and you'd choose to study not the great, great Ford but the great, great but far more obscure Budd Boetticher ("The Tall T," "Seven Men From Now") or the great, great but far more obscure Anthony Mann ("Bend of the River," "Winchester '73").
That is why, in samurai terms, you'd be better off to chose Hideo Gosha, a couple of whose largely unseen films swing into general view this month as part of two film series, one at Landmark's E Street Cinema, the other at the AFI Silver Theatre.
Gosha was a true auteur with a vision, a style, a set of concerns, a preference for certain actors and certain kinds of stories, but at the same time he worked in the real world of Japanese samurai filmmaking and played by its conventions; he had no dreams of global transcendence. To him, it was a job, not a mission.
In other words, he fit in. From the '50s through the '80s, the warrior movie was a staple of Japanese film culture and industry (it seems to have abated now, or at least morphed into a sort of "ironic" phase). Like westerns, it took many forms, from erotic to clownish, from gimmicky to luxurious, from grand to domestic, from comic to hyper-violent, from patriotic to subversive. Gosha could play all those games; he could work large or small and he was a genius at staging action. And in America, nobody ever heard of him. He made what was considered the average Japanese programmer, the typical film, while the movies imported to America were big-ticket items such as Kurosawa's that had made a splash first on the international film festival circuit or they were avant-garde or artsy-cutesy, like 1964's highly erotic "Women of the Dunes."
The quotidian samurai films largely missed these shores, until, of course, VCR and DVD technology made them available from obscure Web sites or on eBay in cheesy pirated versions. (Ever see a movie freeze up, then disintegrate into little weird squares on your screen at the most dramatic moment? I have. Argggggghhhhhh!) But now, at last, if you like guys in bathrobes and flip-flops and ponytails cutting the curds and whey out of each other on the big screen without fear of meltdown from bad mojo in the Taiwan backstreet factory, you will be a happy warrior in the upcoming month. AFI Silver Theatre begins an eight-film series on the genre, with some movies that have never been big-screened recently if at all in the United States, including "Kill!" by Kihachi Okamoto, the almost-never-seen Gosha film "Bandits vs. Samurai Squadron" (I've been looking for it for years), as well as the requisite Kurosawa (but the less-often-seen "Hidden Fortress," said to be the inspiration for "Star Wars"). To finish off the series, a brand-new print of the exquisite, the fabulous, the haunting "Harakiri" will be shown Nov. 5, which, in my humble etc. etc., is probably the best samurai film ever made.
And next Saturday, Landmark's E Street Cinema will screen Gosha's first chop-'em-up, "Three Outlaw Samurai," as part of "Graveyard Shift," a series of films chosen by expert curator types that play Saturdays at midnight through Oct. 8. ("Outlaw Samurai" will be introduced by a definite non-expert, namely me.)
I loved Gosha before I even knew who he was. I was working for another newspaper way back in the Jurassic of the '80s and trundled off to the local rep house to see a movie I'd never heard of, some kind of samurai thing about which the press notes said of the hero: "He's surrounded by 10 men! In other words, he's got them exactly where he wants them!" Hmm, interesting.
And boy, was it. The movie was swift, dangerous, extremely violent and stylized but so very, very cool. I immediately began plotting an American western version of it for the director's career I would never have. But what a great western it would have made! In a circus, a drunken exhibition shooter learns his brother back home is plotting extreme violence. He must return from his self-imposed inebriated squalor to face him, to stop him, though to do so is to confront the fact that he helped his brother commit a terrible crime, a massacre, to steal gold from the government but disguise it as an accident and thus re-invoke the family's honorable name as well as recover its lost wealth.
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Search Washington, DC area movie listings, reviews and locations from the Washington Post. Features DC, Virginia and Maryland entertainment listings for movies and movie guide. Visit http://eg.washingtonpost.com/section/movies today.
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Linda Perry, Back on Her Diverted 'Flight'
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LOS ANGELES "I know what's coming," says Linda Perry, the rock star turned superstar record producer who is now steeling herself, however reluctantly, for a musical comeback. "I'm afraid of people saying, 'What is she thinking she's doing? She's 40 years old, and she thinks she's an artist again? Go write a song for Christina!' "
Perry, a tiny, tightly wound bundle of nerves, energy and tattoos, is sitting in the house that Christina Aguilera built. A cavernous, dimly lit recording studio in the San Fernando Valley complete with religious iconography, dark ceilings and red-tinted glass, it looks like a brothel run by Buddhists. There's a spa, a kitchen, and pedicurists and massage therapists available around the clock -- amenities intended to ensure that her artists, a species not known for their long attention spans, don't wander off during breaks.
Perry owns the place, having recently purchased the studio solely for her use. There's a brand-new Aston Martin parked outside, also hers.
Pop music has been kind to her, though whether it's been mutual depends on whom you ask. It would be impossible to turn on the radio anywhere in the country without hearing evidence of hits Perry wrote and/or produced, including career-transforming tracks for Gwen Stefani, Aguilera and Pink, to name just a few. To her detractors, many of whom lump her in with famously maligned production teams such as the Matrix, she symbolizes everything that's formulaic and perfunctory about pop music.
To her defenders, Perry is an example of Top 40 done right. "I think she's brilliant. I don't understand why there would be anything wrong with what she does," says Caryn Ganz, associate editor of Spin magazine. "Her songs are so diverse. That's part of her gift, that she can write so many songs for so many different people."
Perry, former leader of the briefly famous band 4 Non Blondes, knows what people think of her, and usually she wouldn't care. But she is about to rerelease "In Flight," the beloved (by her, mostly, and many of the 11 or so people who heard it the first time around) album from 1996 that started -- and almost ended -- her solo career. She regards "In Flight" as unfinished business, a rare and deeply personal failure in an otherwise charmed professional life. It's only in hopes of giving it another chance that she consented to take on a few promotional chores, though she distrusts journalists ("I'm convinced that you already have your interview written") and dislikes being photographed.
Perry long ago grew disenchanted with making pop music (for herself, anyway) and with the grunt work that accompanies it. She walked away from pop stardom seven years ago and claims not to miss it. "I didn't like being out in the limelight. I love performing, but that's it," she says. "I have a very particular way I wanted to be a rock star. I just want to loaf around. I don't want to do all that [promotional] stuff."
Growing up in San Diego, Perry always knew she would be famous, though it took a while to figure out the specifics. "I was just loafing, partying all the time, and when I hit 20 [it came to me] like, 'Hello, you're supposed to be doing music right now.' Then it was like, all right, I'm gonna be a rock star."
Within a few years she was. After moving to San Francisco she joined forces with a group of local musicians. 4 Non Blondes' debut, "Bigger, Better, Faster, More?," went triple platinum and birthed one of the '90s' most ubiquitous hits, "What's Up." Perry loathes the song to this day and is embarrassed by her caterwauling lead vocals. "If I was the producer of this band I would have told that girl: 'Mellow out, you're bugging the [expletive] out of me!' "
By the time the group entered the studio to record a follow-up, Perry was ready for a change. She wanted to be a serious artist, she says, while her band mates wanted merely to replicate their debut. She quit the group, promising to find a sound-alike replacement and offering a batch of potential hits she'd already written for the next album. "They were probably gonna be hits," Perry reasons. "But they were crap to me."
She expected to be dropped from her label, but Interscope Records kept Perry and dropped her band mates instead. "I was so devastated by that. They were devastated and hate me," Perry says. "Then I make a [solo] record for it to be shelved. Karma? . . . I don't care. I made a really great record, and it put me into a near suicidal state when they didn't give it even one little push."
Darker and more intimate than anything she had previously done, "In Flight" was a grim accounting of broken relationships and childhood abuse. Perry says that Interscope, which had been hoping for something a little catchier, didn't promote the album, and the disappointing sales rattled her. "My gut feeling that I relied on failed me. . . . I was devastated. I was freaked out. I was very, very depressed," Perry says. "So I just disappeared."
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Search Washington, DC area music events and venues from the Washington Post. Features DC, Virginia and Maryland entertainment listings for music news, events, reviews, clubs, and concerts. Visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/eg/section/music/ today.
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Microsoft Mobile Software Still Behind, but Closing
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The operating system in a mobile device -- whether it's a handheld computer or a smartphone -- isn't something that you should have to fuss over.
These devices are made to compete with paper organizers and shouldn't require much effort. Here's the usage scenario: Take a handheld out of a pocket; use it to look up or jot down a phone number, appointment, e-mail or shopping-list item; then put it away -- repeat as needed, dozens of times a day, and often one-handed. Anything that slows down those actions chops away at a handheld's utility.
Microsoft was late getting into the business of handheld software, and its first attempts looked and worked way too much like miniature versions of Windows itself. (Microsoft somehow considered this a selling point.)
Now it's making another attempt at the market. The changes in its new Windows Mobile 5.0 software aren't obvious -- it looks enough like earlier releases that it's tempting to call it Windows Immobile -- but they show that this company is working to deal with the reality of how busy, distracted people use handheld gadgets.
Beneath its little-changed front end, Windows Mobile 5.0 makes it easier and faster to use the calendar and address-book programs at the center of any handheld organizer. It also brings a badly needed upgrade to the mobile versions of Microsoft's Office applications. But this new operating system also fails to solve old problems with performance and complexity.
As auditioned on two devices -- the Dell Axim X51v handheld and the UTStarcom PPC-6700 smartphone sold by Sprint Nextel -- Windows Mobile 5.0 is better, but not a breakthrough.
The most welcome change in Windows Mobile 5.0 is the way it lets you perform more tasks -- from shuffling through calendar entries to navigating the still-complex settings screens -- by just using a four-way controller below the screen. Companies that put Windows Mobile 5.0 on their handhelds can also add special shortcut buttons to perform other common tasks.
The Sprint Nextel phone ($480, but sold only through Sprint Nextel's business channels at the moment) takes good advantage of this new flexibility. With buttons to invoke Windows Mobile's Start Menu, to confirm an action and to select actions listed at the bottom left and bottom right corners of most screens, the PPC-6700 can be comfortably wielded even while you're bogged down with a shopping bag or carry-on luggage.
Dell's Axim ($499 as tested, with versions starting at $299) sticks to the same layout of controls as earlier Axim handhelds. That means you'll still need to tap the screen to make things happen -- either with your stylus or a carefully-placed fingernail.
But on both handhelds, one of the most common operations in handheld computing -- finding somebody's contact information -- takes longer than necessary because the software doesn't allow you to skip ahead in the alphabet just by pressing buttons. You'll have to break out the stylus -- or, on the Sprint phone, flip open its hidden keyboard -- first.
The tax imposed by Windows Mobile gets steeper once you move outside its core Calendar and Contacts applications.
Its Notes program, intended for you to jot down quick memos to yourself, locks up the entire handheld for five long seconds -- a spinning-beach-ball cursor is meant to persuade you that the system is still working -- every time you close a note. And that's not the only time or place you'll see this unwanted cursor.
To check a handheld's remaining battery life -- something Windows Mobile won't display at the top of the screen until the battery is nearly drained -- you must select the Start Menu's Settings item -- most of the way down that list -- select the System category, navigate down to a battery icon, then open that. (Fortunately, Windows Mobile 5.0 stores programs, files and settings in non-volatile memory, so a dead battery won't wipe your data.)
Adjusting the screen's orientation from tall-and-skinny portrait mode to short-and-wide landscape demands a comparable detour through the Settings screens on the Dell handheld, although the Sprint phone is smart enough to switch automatically when you slide its keyboard open.
Connecting to WiFi wireless networks was pointlessly difficult on both devices, thanks to redundant, jargon-laden controls and the software's determination to make entering a WiFi access point's 26-character alphanumeric password as painfully slow as possible. Just figuring out how to shut off the WiFi receiver on the Sprint phone was a minor mystery. (The Sprint device also communicates over Sprint's 1XRTT and EV-DO networks, making it one of the most data-capable phones ever made.)
Windows Mobile 5.0 bundles a handful of Microsoft programs meant to work like those on your PC. Its shrunken copy of Internet Explorer does a fine job of displaying complex Web pages, although its default font size is big enough to require extensive scrolling. Windows Media Player 10 Mobile can play songs bought or rented at Windows Media-compatible stores such as MSN Music, Napster, Rhapsody and Yahoo.
The cut-down versions of Microsoft Office's programs take a big step up in Windows Mobile 5.0. Word Mobile and Excel Mobile no longer mangle Word and Excel files brought over from a desktop computer and Microsoft now bundles a mobile edition of PowerPoint, as well.
In all of these handheld programs, Microsoft offers a choice of three handwriting-recognition systems. Palm offers only one, its inefficient Graffiti 2 software.
Microsoft also beats Palm soundly with its ActiveSync 4 program (Win 2000 or XP), a far more reliable and stable way to get data on and off a handheld than Palm's antiquated HotSync software. For example, if you unplug a Windows Mobile device in mid-sync, ActiveSync quietly stops and the handheld recovers immediately. Try that with a Palm, and both the handheld and the HotSync software will lock up for a few minutes.
ActiveSync connects to Microsoft's bloated, convoluted Outlook calendar/contacts/e-mail program, but if you don't have a copy already installed, the ActiveSync CD includes only the old Outlook 2002 version, not the superior Outlook 2003 release that replaced it years ago.
The biggest advantage Windows Mobile offers over Palm today may simply be that it's under any sort of development at all.
The Palm OS has been stuck in limbo since Palm spun it off to a separate company, PalmSource Inc., and now even the future of PalmSource is unknown now that Access Inc., a Tokyo company, has put in an acquisition bid for the company. Likewise, Palm itself is reportedly readying a version of its Treo smartphone that runs on Windows Mobile, with that announcement expected at a Palm-Verizon-Microsoft press conference Monday morning in San Francisco.
For now, Palm remains the simpler, faster choice. But if Microsoft keeps plugging away, that won't be the case forever.
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.
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War Supporters' Day to Rally
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The last time Robert Young participated in a demonstration, he was protesting the Vietnam War as it wound down.
It took more than 30 years to make it happen again, but yesterday Young joined hundreds of others on the Mall to support the nation's troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, among them his son, Croft, 32.
"I'm a quiet person," said Young, 65, who traveled from Atlanta toting a full-size Marine Corps flag. "I don't really believe in demonstrations, but I wanted to come here to support my son," a Marine who left Camp Pendleton, Calif., on Wednesday for Fallujah, Iraq.
The afternoon rally was tiny in comparison with Saturday's antiwar demonstration, for which D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey gave a crowd estimate of at least 100,000. But undeterred participants waved flags and placards adorned with such slogans as "Keep the Promise to Iraq" and cheered for the dozens of speakers, many of whom denounced antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq.
Deborah Johns, the mother of an Iraq war veteran, has been traveling across the country speaking in support of the war. She directed some of her comments yesterday at Sheehan, saying that she speaks neither for Johns nor the American people.
After praising President Bush, Johns said she knew what she'd like to do with Sheehan and the antiwar protesters who descended on Washington on Saturday: "I'd like to ship them to Iran." The comment earned applause.
The rally was largely peaceful, punctuated by a few small clashes with antiwar protesters, one of whom wore a T-shirt that read: "Wanted for Mass Murder: The Bush Regime."
Rally-goers asked police to remove the man, who went limp as officers came to escort him away.
"Saddam Hussein is a moron, and you're a moron!" came a voice from the crowd.
"I'm a patriot," responded the protester, who peacefully followed police off the Mall sipping from a Starbucks coffee cup. "Look what's happening. I'm being taken from a public park because of a T-shirt."
By 1 p.m., a small band of antiwar demonstrators had lined up behind the rally stage to deliver such chants as "Hey, Bush, whaddaya say? How many kids have you killed today?"
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Parish Savaged by Audrey Now Feels Rita's Wrath
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CAMERON PARISH, La., Sept. 25 -- Cameron Parish had 48 years to put Audrey behind it, 48 years to watch the really big hurricanes, the true monsters, go elsewhere. But Rita's rough assault on this wild, low-slung corner of southwestern Louisiana reminded people here about their vulnerability nearly half a century after Audrey killed 390 people, making it one of the 10 deadliest U.S. hurricanes.
Rita is not believed to have killed anyone here, but it still slashed Cameron with great swaths of extensive damage that was absent in all but a few other spots touched by the storm. It also left the parish in a state of isolation. Cameron was too flooded and windy and treacherous for rescue missions on the day of the storm, too dangerous for the locals to feel comfortable giving the media more than a peek on the day after.
Much of this parish -- the largest in Louisiana, covering 1,300 square miles of some of the United States' best hunting and fishing grounds, and housing the second-largest deposits in the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve system -- is impassable, its few small towns and clusters of fishing camps mostly flooded and its roads submerged. Along the roads leading into the parish is a kaleidoscope of half-submerged houses, toppled telephone polls and ruined barns. Nowhere is Rita's destructive force more evident.
"It's an island now," said Cathy Munson, who sneaked into the Cameron Parish town of Hackberry on a Go-Devil boat and discovered the town she grew up in was surrounded by high water.
Munson was 7 when Audrey made landfall in western Cameron Parish in 1957, within miles of the spot where Rita ripped ashore early Saturday morning. "Audrey was nothing compared to this," Munson said.
The difference between the two storms is that this time, Cameron was warned -- this time computer modeling and forecasting methods that did not exist in 1957 gave a heads-up to Cameron Parish. And the parish listened.
Nearly all of the parish's 9,200 residents evacuated before Rita arrived, leaving behind only a few holdouts. When Munson slipped into Hackberry, she went straight for the house of the school secretary, Miss Molly. Miss Molly Reasoner, like all the rest of the people on Munson's list of a dozen or so friends and relatives to check on, was shaken, but alive. Each person told Munson the same thing: They wished they had not stayed.
Their town, still blocked off by police because of concerns that oil spills could ignite into incendiary balls, is one of those grim places in Louisiana now. They bury their dead high in Louisiana, placing coffins inside aboveground sarcophagi to keep them out of the floodwaters. But Rita pushed the water so high that the coffins in Hackberry came floating out anyway. A spokesman for Cameron's emergency operations department politely asked photographers Sunday not to take pictures of the floating coffins, out of respect for the living relatives, when more of the parish opens to the media.
The wildlife seems as restless and confused as the people here. Alligators glide quietly through roadside marshes that were mostly dry before Rita and are entirely wet now. "All his toenails are gonna be red from gripping the bottom of that marsh to hold on," said Mike Daigle, who makes his living pulling shrimp from the choppy waters south of his home in Hackberry.
Daigle and the others from Hackberry, the ones who aren't as good at slipping around roadblocks as Munson and her bayou-loving brothers, can do nothing but envision the wreckage of their town now. The police who block the road don't know when the residents will get back, or when there will be a return of the movie stars, corporate chieftains and high-rollers who flock to the sport guides in a parish that likes to call itself "Louisiana's Outback."
Still, the people of Hackberry come, easing down Highway 27 through Calcasieu Parish and across the bridge over a bayou pronounced SHOE-pig, but spelled Choupique. The highway to their town now hosts a rumor mill like none other. Everyone has a hint, a snippet of information or a tale too tall. "At this point, I think we have two volcanoes and a UFO down there," said Tracey Webb of the parish emergency management department.
Those who can't get in stand in awe alongside their neighbors in Calcasieu Parish, just to the north across the Ellender Bridge, the bridge that Roger Thibodeaux got a day off from school in Hackberry to see dedicated by Edwin Edwards, Louisiana's bon vivant governor at the time. Out on the road that Edwards -- now serving a federal prison term on corruption charges -- opened up for Hackberry, Ernest Westlund plunged his hands into the flooded muck around his now-despicable home. He pulled up a flagpole and struggled to right it.
"I just can't stand to see my flag underwater like that," Westlund said.
Jeff Bergeron, mud-spattered and weary, wished that everyone in Louisiana had the same sense of duty. He, like so many throughout the state, blames Louisiana's long and colorful history of political corruption for squandering the oil revenue of the 1960s and '70s that could have been used on coastal restoration projects to lessen the impact of hurricanes.
"We've got our governor, Edwin Edwards, sitting up there in prison, and everybody laughs about it, everybody thought it was so funny, Louisiana and corruption and graft," said Bergeron, whose submerged house sits about half a mile from the Cameron Parish line. "Well, now we see how serious it is."
Bergeron tried to get to his house by foot. But he turned around fast when he saw something thick and wriggly and dark in the water. He knew it was a water moccasin, and he didn't plan to test it. "That salt water the storm pushed in drives 'em crazy."
Just down the road, an alligator, its scaly head just visible above the waterline, was pushing slowly and steadily through the brown water: It doesn't like salt water, either, and was surely looking for something fresher and better. It was pointing north, out of Cameron Parish.
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CAMERON PARISH, La., Sept. 25 -- Cameron Parish had 48 years to put Audrey behind it, 48 years to watch the really big hurricanes, the true monsters, go elsewhere. But Rita's rough assault on this wild, low-slung corner of southwestern Louisiana reminded people here about their vulnerability nearly...
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Massachusetts Governor Makes His State the Butt of His Jokes
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BOSTON -- Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, exploring a possible presidential run in 2008, has a message for his fellow Republicans.
"Being a conservative Republican in Massachusetts," he told a GOP audience in South Carolina, "is a bit like being a cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention."
Bada-bing. For months, this blue-state governor has been pitching himself to conservatives in a way that campaign experts say is highly unusual -- perhaps even historic. Instead of talking about his home state with the usual lip-quivering pride, Romney uses it like a vaudeville comic would use his mother-in-law: as a laugh line.
As in: "There are more Republicans in this room tonight than I have in my state!" -- another joke he used in South Carolina.
The problem: Some people here in Massachusetts are not laughing. Political observers say Romney may have put himself in trouble for next year, when the "vegetarian convention" has another gubernatorial election scheduled.
"For an incumbent governor to make fun of the state seemed gratuitous," said Jeffrey M. Berry, a professor of political science at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. "I think people sort of felt he was flipping the bird to voters here."
Romney, 58, is a transplant from Michigan who raised his family here and gained prominence as a Boston businessman. He has an actor's good looks, ample charisma as a speaker and a résumé that includes turning around the scandal-plagued 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.
He was elected governor in 2002 -- becoming the fourth consecutive Republican to hold that office. Bay State politicos explain this trend by saying that their Republicans usually tend to be moderate, and their majority Democratic Party tends to stage death-match-style gubernatorial primaries that leave candidates exhausted and broke.
For now, Romney is still just a governor and not officially a candidate for anything. He has not even said whether he will run for reelection, promising a decision on that this fall.
As far as the presidency goes, a spokeswoman described Romney's current status this way: "He's testing the waters. It's not a full-time testing of the waters."
Nevertheless, even in the water-testing stage, it is clear that he is trying something new.
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Gov. Mitt Romney, exploring a possible presidential run in 2008, has a message for his fellow Republicans: Take my state. Please!
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Hughes Reaches Out Warily in Cairo
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CAIRO, Sept. 25 -- Karen Hughes, the new public diplomacy czar charged with improving the U.S. image, began her maiden diplomatic voyage Sunday, meeting in picturesque settings with Egyptian students who have benefited from American largess.
Hughes said she would steer clear of meeting with representatives of Egypt's largest opposition group, and a lunch scheduled for Monday with "opinion leaders" includes mostly people supportive of the government that has ruled the country under emergency decree for a quarter-century.
Outside the carefully vetted settings of Hughes's visit, interviews with ordinary Egyptians indicated deep anger at the policies of the Bush administration.
"You American people are 100 percent good," said Farouq Hickel, a bearded minivan driver who was walking past the Bab Zuwayla, a 900-year-old Islamic monument, restored with U.S. funds, that Hughes toured. "We have no problems with Americans. But look at what Bush is doing -- he is messing up the world." Hurricane Katrina, he said, was God's revenge for President Bush's actions.
Hughes, recently confirmed as undersecretary of state, has attracted enormous attention in her new role, largely because she is one of the president's closest confidantes. Undersecretaries generally travel with a handful of aides, but Hughes has brought along a planeload of reporters, including representatives of all five U.S. television networks, one from al-Arabiya television and a writer from GQ magazine.
Speaking to reporters for nearly an hour as she flew to Cairo, Hughes appeared to set a relatively low bar for judging the success of her mission.
"Many of the differences and many of the concerns are deep-seated, and I'm probably not going to change many minds," Hughes said. "But if I make a connection with a person or two who I can keep following up with after I leave here on my trip, I would consider it a success."
Hughes betrayed some nervousness in her first diplomatic foray, which will also take her to Saudi Arabia and Turkey. This is her first visit to any of the countries, and as she spoke to reporters she clutched briefing papers that appeared to be the diplomatic equivalent of Cliffs Notes. Turkey was a "democratic state," and Egypt was the "most populous" country in the region, the document said.
Asked if she was meeting in Cairo with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hughes turned to an aide and indicated she was not sure of the answer. The aide whispered back, and Hughes replied, "We are respectful of Egypt's laws."
The activities of the Muslim Brotherhood are officially banned, but it is regarded as the country's largest opposition party and has pressed for a more open political system in Egypt, the stated goal of U.S. policy. Nor does Hughes have plans to meet with representatives of Kifaya, an umbrella opposition group.
The magnitude of Hughes's task was demonstrated by the headlines of Sunday morning's edition of le Progrès Egyptien, a French-language newspaper. Featured were Israel's attack in Gaza, a declaration that Egypt's reforms would never be imposed from above, new accusations of atrocities by U.S. troops in Iraq and a feature suggesting that Bush was considered a greater menace than Osama bin Laden.
Hughes acknowledged that she faced "a huge challenge" but said she would focus on stressing the compassion of the United States to highlight the contrast with violent extremism. The administration's policies offer "education, opportunity, freedom of speech and expression," she said. "Terrorists, their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up."
Hughes traveled first to the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar University for a meeting with Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a Sunni Muslim leader who is close to the government and has spoken out against extremism. A recent fatwa , or decree, by Tantawi -- saying normalization of ties with Israel was theologically acceptable -- has generated controversy and anger in Egypt. Local media speculated that the cleric issued it because the Egyptian government recently deployed troops to guard the southern part of Gaza after Israel's withdrawal.
At Bab Zuwayla, Hughes climbed a tower to gaze over the city skyline. "It's magical," the former television reporter said. "A thousand minarets -- and satellite dishes."
Then she sat down with five high school exchange students who had spent a year in the United States. Ahmed Gammal, 18, lived in Hudson, Ind., and said no one in the small town knew anything about Egypt. "When I said I was from Egypt, they asked, 'Do you ride camels or live in pyramids?' " he said. "They were serious."
Police lined the streets around the monument, suspiciously eyeing people who spoke to reporters. Mohamed Osman, a government employee, said Hughes's trip was potentially important. "Americans are biased against Islam," he explained. "Look what they are doing in Iraq." But he hurried away after two policeman came over.
Amani Fikri, an editor at an opposition newspaper, tried to stay for the student event but was asked to leave. She said Hughes needed to tell Bush to change his policies and stop backing undemocratic governments in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. "The American people are very good and kind," she said but pointed out that Bush's reelection made it "very difficult to differentiate between the American people and American policy."
Hughes also met with students -- all recipients of scholarships from a U.S.-funded program -- at the American University in Cairo, an elite English-language institution. The students asked generally polite but occasionally pointed questions on Iraq and U.S. policy toward Syria and Iran.
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World news headlines from the Washington Post, including international news and opinion from Africa, North/South America, Asia, Europe and Middle East. Features include world weather, news in Spanish, interactive maps, daily Yomiuri and Iraq coverage.
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Hong Kong Officials Stir Conflict on Tour
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HONG KONG, Sept. 25 -- Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers, some of whom had been barred from China for more than a decade, crossed into the mainland at Beijing's invitation and held a contentious meeting Sunday with a member of the ruling Communist Party's Politburo about political reform and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The Chinese government had long refused to hold any official talks with Hong Kong's democrats but invited the entire 60-member Legislative Council on a two-day tour of the southeastern province of Guangdong. The move was a conciliatory gesture after months of acrimony over China's refusal to expand direct elections in the former British colony.
The schedule on the first day of the visit was heavy on sightseeing, with mainland officials eager to highlight the remarkable economic progress that China has made in the past decade. Hong Kong's democrats acknowledged the achievement but said it was not enough.
"I was not too surprised to see the rapid economic development in China," said Lee Cheuk-yan, a lawmaker banned from the mainland since being arrested and expelled in 1989 for giving money raised in Hong Kong to the students leading pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. "I would have been much happier if I had been able to see developments in human rights, democracy and people's freedoms here."
In a meeting with the provincial party chief, Zhang Dejiang, in Guangzhou, Lee pressed for a reversal of the party's official position that the government's use of force that day was justified. The military crushed the protests on June 4, 1989, leaving hundreds if not thousands dead and prompting widespread outrage in Hong Kong ahead of its scheduled return to Chinese rule in 1997.
Participants said Zhang replied that only a minority of people supported "redressing June 4" and insisted the party had handled the "incident" correctly. When other pro-democracy lawmakers in the closed-door meeting objected, Zhang said the conversation had grown disagreeable and that any further discussion of the subject would be a "waste of breath," participants said.
"That was really bad," said Emily Lau, leader of the pro-democracy Frontier party. "Mr. Zhang had said we could have an honest dialogue, but when we raised the issues that the Hong Kong people are concerned about, he got angry."
One pro-democracy lawmaker, Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran street activist, was initially barred from the meeting because he was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Redress June 4" on it. He was allowed in after putting on another shirt and a jacket. He told reporters he then lectured Zhang for several minutes about Tiananmen and democracy.
Earlier in the day, Leung embarrassed the authorities by wearing a T-shirt showing a lone man stopping a line of tanks during the Tiananmen crackdown and by shouting, "Long live democracy!" in a subway station in the southern city of Shenzhen.
Hong Kong's pro-government lawmakers said it was inappropriate for the democrats to raise political issues at the meeting with Zhang, arguing that the session was supposed to be a courtesy meeting.
But Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, Donald Tsang, who joined the lawmakers on the visit, said the exchange was friendly and "a very good start."
"I believe it was a very frank and candid exchange, and Party Secretary Zhang has stated very clearly his own position, and there was enough mutual respect on the matter," he said. Analysts said the visit was an attempt by the government to improve its image in Hong Kong before Tsang unveils a plan to reform the territory's political system next month. China has rejected public demands for direct elections to choose Hong Kong's next chief executive and all of its legislators. Tsang is said to have obtained Beijing's support for minor changes intended to make the system slightly more democratic while ensuring its allies win most offices. For example, Tsang is expected to propose that a 1,600-member committee stacked with supporters of Beijing choose the next chief executive, instead of the current 800-member committee.
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Hong Kong's pro-democracy lawmakers crossed into the mainland at Beijing's invitation and held a contentious meeting with a member of the ruling council about politics and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
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Maryland's Contest of The Media Markets
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Before he takes the stage in Baltimore to formally declare his bid for governor Wednesday evening, Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) will spend the bulk of the day campaigning in the Washington suburbs, putting in high-profile appearances in both Montgomery and Prince George's counties.
The mayor's whirlwind itinerary is testament to a serious shift in Maryland's political landscape -- and underscores the respective challenges he and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan face as the 2006 governor's race gets underway in earnest.
O'Malley is striving to become better known in a region with newfound clout in Democratic primaries, while Duncan must find a way to break into Baltimore's expansive media market to be competitive.
Unlike two decades ago, when William Donald Schaefer made the leap from Baltimore to Annapolis, being a popular mayor of Maryland's largest city is no longer enough to guarantee the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Since 1986, the share of Democrats residing in Baltimore and surrounding Baltimore County has waned while Montgomery and Prince George's have grown into the state's most Democrat-rich counties.
"The axis has shifted towards the greater Washington marketplace," said Keith Haller, an independent Maryland pollster. "Especially for the Democratic primary, that is where the attention will be focused."
Nearly one-quarter of Maryland's registered Democrats resided in Baltimore when Schaefer was first elected governor; today, fewer than 15 percent do. The share of Democrats in Baltimore County also has dipped, to about 15 percent. Meanwhile, Montgomery and Prince's George's together account for more than 35 percent of the state's registered Democrats.
While the dynamic should help Duncan's chances, he will enter the race confronting arguably more immense challenges than O'Malley -- which are reflected in early primary polling that show the mayor with a double-digit lead statewide.
Despite a summer-long "listening and learning tour" that has taken him to all corners of the state, Duncan remains a virtual unknown in the Baltimore media market. Baltimore television stretches well beyond the city limits, reaching more than half the state's registered Democrats, including much of the Eastern Shore.
Mike Morrill, a longtime Maryland Democratic operative who has worked for Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski and former governor Parris N. Glendening, said, "People have already formed impressions of the mayor in large parts of the state where Doug is a complete blank slate. It is very difficult for Washington suburban candidates to get media coverage in the Baltimore area and very difficult for them to penetrate the consciousness up here."
That was apparent Friday afternoon, when Duncan's tour took him to Chesapeake City in the northeastern corner of the state. The head of valet parking at an inn where he stopped had never heard of him. Over soda and hors d'oeuvres at the inn, Duncan, who plans to make his bid official this fall, chatted with five Democrats about ways to get better known in Cecil County.
It is territory where O'Malley has quite a profile. Not only do residents see the mayor on TV, but his Irish rock band has made regular appearances at an outdoor stage near the inn.
"His opponent used to come down here and play in the band, so everyone knows him," said Bill Manlove, a county commissioner who is backing Duncan. Asked how Duncan can boost his exposure, Manlove paused and then said: "People are starting to talk a little bit. They ask me what I think of him."
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Before he takes the stage in Baltimore to formally declare his bid for governor Wednesday evening, Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) will spend the bulk of the day campaigning in the Washington suburbs, putting in high-profile appearances in both Montgomery and Prince George's counties.
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Area Evacuees Now Hit By Unease, Uncertainty
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Shaunni Johnson, a fourth-grader, erupted in tears at Scotchtown Hills Elementary School in Laurel the other day, crying so hard that a teacher took her to see a counselor.
"My daddy's leaving me," Shaunni said, prompting a school official to call the girl's mother.
Her father, Shaun Waters, 29, had left Maryland for Dallas, hoping to find work -- the second recent upheaval in Shaunni's life. The first came with Hurricane Katrina, when she and her parents fled New Orleans, taking shelter with extended family members in a Laurel townhouse.
A month after Katrina decimated New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities, Shaunni and her parents are among hundreds of thousands of evacuees scattered across the country.
And over the weekend, the uncertainty of their futures had been vastly compounded by Hurricane Rita, whose torrential rains swept across the region Saturday, bursting over levees to fill New Orleans with water that authorities say will take three weeks to pump out.
Now there were new damage estimates to be collected from afar by evacuees considering return, and those who had been weighing whether to put down roots elsewhere had renewed persuasion as their television screens filled with images of roiling floodwaters.
The Washington Post last week revisited more than a dozen flooded-out Louisianans who were first interviewed shortly after they arrived in the Washington area early this month. Although several said they have settled into fairly comfortable routines, the evacuees continue to live for the short term, unable to talk assuredly about the future.
"I'm planning on going back, but it depends," said Donna Colna, 46, an evacuee from St. Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb. She is among three adults, two teenagers and three small children, all from two families, living with a minister and his wife in Darnestown.
"I've heard they're going to bulldoze it," she said of St. Bernard. "And then I've heard they're only going to bulldoze part of it. I've heard it's going to be one year until we can get back in. I've heard five years. There're just so many 'ifs.' "
Most of the evacuees are homesick. Some have found jobs; others haven't. Some, like Waters, have settled their loved ones here, then returned to the South.
Waters decided that Texas would be a better place for him. He could be with his mother and other relatives -- who also are evacuees -- and perhaps make his way into New Orleans and get a job cleaning debris. Shaunni's mother, Shani Johnson, 30, said she and her daughter hope to visit Waters in a few weeks. That came as some comfort to a 9-year-old girl whose world has been turned upside down.
"I cried my whole day at school," Shaunni recalled.
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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'Best of the Beatles'
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"Best of the Beatles," a program that airs on PBS on Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 8 p.m. ET, is the untold story of the world's most famous band's formative years -- seen through the eyes of original Beatles drummer Pete Best.
Best was online Monday, Sept. 26, at 12:30 p.m. ET to discuss the Beatles, his life and career and the PBS film.
Viewers learn the facts about the Beatles' experiences in Liverpool and Hamburg at the time when the band redefined the vanguard. They also learn how it all went horribly wrong for Best, the fifth Beatle.
For the first time, viewers will hear Best's story, his role in forming the Beatles and how he survived a public nightmare, all illustrated with a variety of music, archival material and interviews. Pete's story reveals the unlikely chain of events that led to his becoming the drummer in the Beatles in the first place: his mum, the formidable Mona, pawned all her jewelry and placed a 33-to-one bet on a horse called "Never Say Die." The horse won. With her winnings, Mona bought her dream home, and sent Pete, his brothers and "friends" into the basement to socialize and play their music. From this was born the Casbah Coffee Club, which became Beatles headquarters. Thus the legend began -- the wild revelry of playing the clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg' red light district, the beginning of Beatlemania, recording for Polydor, establishing their authority as Liverpool's number one group by winning the Mersey Beat Poll, signing manager Brian Epstein, the Decca Records rejection, meeting George Martin, signing for Parlophone, recording "Love Me Do" at Abbey Road Studios, and finally Best's dismissal from the Beatles.
Most recently Best started The Pete Best Band, which tours internationally. He has written a book about the early days of the Beatles which was released in the United States in 2003 (St. Martins Press) and now the DVD entitled "Best Of The Beatles," which includes rare footage combined with new interviews and insights from key players beginning in Liverpool, 1962.
Greenville, S.C.: Who in your opinion was the most innovative or influential rock and roll drummer in the of the sixties era?
Pete Best: I would say influential, Ginger Baker. There's lots of excellent drummers and drummers who came out of Liverpool. There was Kenny Jones, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, they were creating styles that were way out in front of other people.
Spring Valley, Washington, D.C.: Dear Mr. Best, Wow, what an opportunity! Thank you for taking questions. Obvious questions are whether you remained friendly with the Beatles over the past 40 years, did you continue to like their music or did you feel they became too commercial or faddish? Beyond that I'd appreciate any and all stories about them in those early years (what did they like to drink and eat, stories about travels). What great memories to have.
Pete Best: Yes, you know, regardless of what happened from my particular side, I still remained friendly from my side. The door was always open from my side. As being a fan of their music, yes, regardless of what happened, it was nice to seeing what directions they went on as they were becoming icons of the music industry. There is a documentary being aired on Wednesday the 28th of September on PBS, between 8 and 9 eastern, the Sixties Week, called Best of the Beatles. In conjunction with that there is also a three hour DVD Being released by Light Year. That's available on all the online Web sites and major distribution outlets. That covers it -- watch the documentary and get the DVD, in its entirety.
New York, N.Y.: A business magazine once listed the worst business decisions in history, and Decca's not signing the Beatles made the list. Ironically, had they been signed then, you would have been signed as well. Have you ever thought what might have happened from that point had Decca signed the Beatles?
Pete Best: I think the answer is yes, your mind does reflect if Decca had signed them. Unfortunately they didn't! Its covered in the documentary and DVD with a great interview with Mike Smith, the A&R man at Decca who was in control of that session. And its very interesting to hear what he has to say about the subject.
Philadelphia, Pa.: There was a study on the effects of music on people that stated that the body responds best to certain types of drumming. Indeed, the Beatles, but their very name -- Beatles -- established themselves as a band with a terrific beat. As the originator of that beat, did you realize you were the secret weapon in creating the Beatles phenomenon?
Pete Best: LOL!! I've been called many things, but not "Secret Weapon"! No, I think at the time you are creating your own drumming style. What the world sees is unbeknownst to yourself. Only compared to other people later do you realize that you created something that was different than what was going on at that time.
Baltimore, Md.: How is it that you never hooked up with any of the other "British Invasion" bands? It's always seemed like such an incestuous scene that you could've gone from the Beatles to any number of other groups that went on to success.
Pete Best: Well when the office of work came in, after my dismissal, numerous decisions later, there was an up and coming band in Liverpool, Lee Curtis and the All Stars, and I thought it would be interesting to start with a band with a lot of potential that I could do something with. We achieved a lot of things, they went on to become the Pete Best Four. But unfortunately even though we toured and recorded in America, it wasn't meant to be that we were going to be part of the British Invasion at that time.
Florida: What would you say to those critics who have described Ringo as the underappreciated linchpin of the Beatles? Could any other leading drummer of the era have done what he did?
Pete Best: I think he got a situation where a lot of drummers in Liverpool were approached prior to Ringo accepting the job. And out of loyalty to myself they turned the job down. So Ringo wasn't the first person to be approached. And I think if any of the other drummers had stepped into my drumming shoes, then they could have done anything which Ringo Starr did.
Columbus, Ohio: When performing in Hamburg, how much of each set included Beatle written material? Were you aware at the time, that the song writing duo of John and Paul had so much promise?
Pete Best: There were three trips out to Hamburg. We were aware of the fact that John and Paul had written original material before the Beatles. The first trip out to Hamburg and 90 percent of the second trip, most of the material we were doing were standards and copies. It was only during the third trip in April, 1962, by this time we had started to introduce original material into the act. In the early days, it was very interesting to see the response from the crowd as regards that original material. And I think what concerns it as regards John and Paul being great songwriters, is when we actually got our recording contract with EMI we were confident enough in our own original material and hence the first British release was two original songs, Love Me Do and P.S. I Love You, which the world knows today went into the charts in England. The response in Hamburg was great to the original material.
Richmond, Va.: I once read that Lennon commented that he did his best stuff before the Beatles became famous. When I listen to the early albums, I can see what he means ... there seems to be an energy there that hasn't been duplicated.
I get the impression that Hamburg was quite an experience musically. What was your experience like in Hamburg? Was Lennon a royal pain or was he easy to get along with?
Pete Best: LOL! Well, I agree with what John said regarding the best music we played as far as rock n roll was around the clubs in Hamburg and Liverpool. Because the music we were playing then was full of energy, excitement and ferocity. With regard to John's personality, out of all of them, even though I was friends with all of them, I found that John was my best soul mate. John and I had many good times together. And again, a lot of this and the memories are captured in the documentary and the DVD. As far as I was concerned, he was my man.
Bethesda, Md.: I have this long-running debate with a friend over which of the Beatles most defined their style as it evolved. He says Paul, who wrote the music, but I always think it was John, who infused the band with funk and pushed the group into new territory.
What would be your thoughts on this?
Pete Best: I think they're right on both counts. I think they were both musically wise very influential in what they did. But there were two different feels to music. I think John's was more raw edged and down to earth. Whereas Paul's approach was a little bit bubble gum. But it's nice to have both of those extremes, because you can build on it, it's not just one person.
Lyme, Conn.: Stu Stucliffe is the least known Beatle. What was Stu like? Did you get to know him well, and what are some of your best memories of him?
Pete Best: I got to know Stu when he first came to my mother's club, the Casbah Coffee Club. That was in 1959. I got to know him very well when I joined the band in August 1960 because by then Stu was playing bass. As a person he was great. He has been much maligned over the years as regards to being a bad bass player, but he wasn't. There were better bass players, there were worse bass players. But what he gave on stage was 200 percent. And when a person does that you can only admire him for his efforts. Of course since then, we know that Stu as well as being a musician, was also a brilliant artist, whose carrier was tragically cut short in 1962 by a brain hemorrhage. But all in all he was a great guy and contributed an awful lot to the ascendancy of the Beatles.
Harrisburg, Pa.: What is the DVD about and is it on sale now?
washingtonpost.com: PBS says it is on sale now and will air on Wed., Sept. 28. To Buy the DVD, visit: Shop PBS
Pete Best's official Web site: petebest.com
washingtonpost.com: Check your Local Listings for more information.
Thank you so much for this opportunity!
Have you continued as an active musician over the years since you left the Beatles? Any recordings?
Pete Best: The answer to that is yes. Again, my story is well chronicled in the documentary and DVD which is out there. I stepped out of show business for about 20 years to bring my family up...And in 1988 I went back into music again and I've been in music ever since. Touring the world with my own band, the Pete Best Band. There are recordings out there and CD's of the Pete Best Band. They are most probably released on the PB Splash label. If you can't track them down, they are available on my Web site, www.petebest.com. The good news is that in spring, 2006, the band has an original album coming out, material written by the band itself. We'll keep you more informed on that on the web site as it progresses.
Huntingtown, Md.: As a follow-up to Richmond's question, did you stay friendly with John up 'til his death? What about the others?
Pete Best: I think the easiest way of answering that, is that I never actually saw any of the Beatles again after 1963. But John always remained a friend to me regardless of what happened. And the same with the others. Never actually seen them but I would hope they would look upon me as a friend.
Roanoke, Va.: Is it a fair comparison between the early Beatles experience in Germany (i.e. leather jackets, faster music, etc.) and later punk rock movement in Britain and U.S.?
Pete Best: LOL! I think it's something in hindsight. We were the flagship as regardless to leather image in Liverpool. What people saw many years afterwards was the punk movement, and the dress and costumes during that particular era, a lot of people cross referenced that and said that the Beatles in their leather days must have been comparable to that scene. And hence, you've got a lot of people saying that possibly the Beatles, unbeknownst to themselves, were not just forerunners of rock n roll, but also of the punk movement as well. I rest my case!
Liverpool: So, Pete, did your mum have some inside info on that horse, Never Say Die?
Pete Best: LOL! If she did, she kept it a good secret!
With the high price of fame that John and George paid do you feel in some odd way you may in fact be the luckiest Beatle?
Pete Best: I always have said that. Because a lot of people have cast me as the most unfortunate man in show business. But when you look at it from my side, I'm still alive and I've still got my health and happiness. And lots of things in life which have compensated for it. That takes in having a great band, a marriage which has lasted 40 years, two beautiful daughters which have given my four wonderful grandchildren. The band is touring the world and getting great acclaim in their own right. So, I'm happy. And if I can keep on saying that, I can enjoy life. And that compensates for some of things that happened many, many years ago.
San Francisco, Calif.: I saw your show in San Francisco a few years ago and it was great (even if the opening band messed up their starting time, but that's another story). The Pete Best Band really rocks. When is the band going to tour again and when are you going to put up a new album?
Pete Best: Well, we've just finished a tour of the east and west coast in July of this year. We are back again in October. But this time we will be in the mid west and east coast. Next spring, we will be out on the west coast again. And we'll keep all that information posted on the web site petebest.com.
As regards future recordings, as I mentioned before, there will be an original album out in spring of next year.
Poughkeepsie, New York: Hi Pete ... (You're always my favorite Beatle!!) My question for you is "What's your favorite Beatle song" ...... God Bless you, Pete ...
Pete Best: Simple answer to this one: favorite Beatles song has always been I Saw Her Standing There.
New York. N.Y.: I have your album "Best of the Beatles" and you recent CD. Why did you not attempt to record more?
Pete Best: At that time, it was very much a case, that album goes back to the mid-sixties. Then 1968 I moved away from show business. And re-entered it again in 1988. And consequently since then, I've recorded a lot more material. But it wasn't a case of not recording anymore it was just a case of when and how I was going to do it.
Annandale, Va.: How good a musician was George Harrison? Were there other guitar players available in Liverpool, or was he the best?
Pete Best: I think George, I knew George from 1959 in fact before that. I had seen George playing prior to coming to the Casbah in 1959. What you've got to remember the Quarrymen went on to become the Beatles - John, George and Paul. It wasn't a case of finding another guitarist. They felt he was part of the band and he grew in stature as he improved and became a very accomplished guitar player which the world knows today. I think back then there were a lot of guitar players who were better than George, but through practice and hard work he caught up with an awful lot of them. And hence you get George Harrison the guitarist the world knows today.
Queen Anne's County, Md.: Why do you think that John, George and Ringo remained good friends after the Beatles' breakup with Paul pretty much on the outside?
Pete Best: I wish I knew the answer to that one. I wasn't privvy, I wasn't aware of what was going on behind the scenes. So if there had been any internal pressures which caused people to fall out with one another, maybe that was the reason. But that's just an assumption. I don't know the real reason for it.
Obviously, there will never be another Beatles, or Who or Zeppelin ..... but, in your opinion, what new bands will we be talking about in 30 years? Ones that are doing really unique stuff that will have staying power?
Pete Best: That's like having a crystal ball! LOL! Universally it would be hard, because like everything else, you're not aware of the bands in different parts of the world. But being a Liverpool lad, I'm always interested in what comes o ut of Liverpool. And I think a young band in Liverpool called Coral with the right breaks, they've got the staying power to be around in 30 years.
Birmingham, Ala.: Pete, do you still live in Liverpool and associate with the same crowd as back in the early days of the Beatles?
Pete Best: I'm still living in Liverpool, that's my home town. And those of us that are still around today, I still have a lot of friends from those days, both friends and friends in the music industry as well. They were part of the Liverpool scene in those days. I think Liverpool is great in that its always been a hot bed for up and coming musicians. It's moved away from its industrial image, but that image has been replaced by tourism. And Liverpool is alive and kicking again.
Evanston, Ill.: Hi Pete -- I always have wanted to ask you if there is one Beatles song, or one album where you thought, "Darn, I could have done SO MUCH better than this" or something along those lines?
Pete Best: LOL! I think deep down inside, you don't think about it everybody, most probably drummer's pride comes into the question. So there would be some songs which you say you could have done better. But at the end of the day, you know, what goes on in the studio, no one really knows! Sometimes you have to play something which the A&R man wants. And sometimes you might not agree with it, but you have to do it.
Washington, D.C.: How would things have been different if Stu Sutcliffe had not quit (and then passed away)? Were you close to him?
Pete Best: I was very close to Stu as I mentioned before, he was a great guy with a great personalilty and his contribution to the band was immense. I don't think it would have changed an awful lot, my own opinion, if Stu had stayed within the band. Because he would have improved as the rest of us did.
Lexington, Ky.: Pete, I'm wondering what you would say to Paul if you ran into him somewhere. What would you like him to say to you after all these years?
Pete Best: A lot of people are under the impression that I would want to find out the reason for my dismissal. That would be the furthest thing from my mind. What I would be asking Paul is very much about what's going on today. Yes we can laugh and joke about the old days in Hamburg and Liverpool. And just enjoy life, talking about things in general. He's a family man and I'm a family man. And I would expect Paul to most likely converse most likely along the same lines. I don't think either of us would want to discuss the pros and cons of the dismissal!
Helena, Mont.: Thanks for taking our questions. What reason did the Beatles give you for replacing you with Ringo? How did they tell you? Did you have any idea the sack was coming?
Pete Best: Again, it's all in the DVD and in the documentary airing on the 28th, in great detail...Not just myself, but other people who were there in the 60's. So its interesting to have their opinions as well.
washingtonpost.com: Check Your Local Listings
New Haven, Conn.: Did your mother keep in touch with John Lennon or any of the Beatles? I noticed John Lennon wore your grandfather's medals at a photo shoot, as your book mentioned.
Pete Best: The answer to that is yes. Regardless of what happened to me, circumstances in our life made it so that she had to socialize with the Beatles. She was very diplomatic. She would help the Beatles after my dismissal as best she could as you can see by the wearing on the Sgt. Pepper album of my grandfather's medals.
Washington, D.C.: What ever happened to Tony Sheridan? You and the Beatles recorded with him, did a great album in fact, and that seems to be the last we've heard of him. Whatever became of him, if you know?
Pete Best: He's alive and well and kicking and very much part of the music scene in Germany where he has mostly lived since the 60's. We are sometimes on the same bill together or touring together. It's a funny old life! LOL!
Washington, D.C.: I know this was another band from your days, but it is true that Rory Storm and his mother died tragically? Do you know the correct story to their demise?
Pete Best: There's lots of rumours as to what happened. Some people say it was a suicide pact. Some people say it was thru dispair. I don't think anyone really knows the real truth behind it.
Do you know Mike Smith from the Dave Clark 5? If so, how's he doing?
Pete Best: I did meet Mike Smith many years ago when Glad All Over went into the starts. But I didn't know him personally so I don't know his whereabouts or what has happened to him.
Bethesda, Md.: Sorry to add to the pile of questions about other people, but I'm a huge fan of John Lennon and was wondering if you could give some anecdotes about the two of you in your younger years. Also, how did you react to the news when he was killed?
Pete Best: Well I think as regards to the anecdotes, please watch the documentary and the DVD, there's loads of them in there. But as regards to John's death, the tragic circumstances behind it, like the rest of the world, I was truly sad when I heard about it. At the end of the day, we had been good friends regardless of what happened. And it was the loss of a brilliant person's life.
Brooklyn: What is the difference between a good drummer and a great drummer?
Pete Best: That sounds like a musician's question! I would turn around and say, and it's my way of dipping out of it, very tongue in cheek, I think the difference between a good drummer and a great drummer -- is what the audience thinks!
Houston, Tex.: I must tell you that I fooled my kids for years by telling them I was the Beatles' first drummer. And later they told their friends the same thing so it has become a running joke. Anyway, what I would like to know is what was there about Paul and John that made them such great songwriters? What set them apart?
Pete Best: To "Pete Best in Texas' -- I think what made John and Paul so great was just one word -- talent. And I hope you get much enjoyment impersonating me!
Pete Best: I'm sure that people will love hearing the anecdotes and stories, not only from me but others as well, on the DVD and in the documentary. Thank you so much for the response. I hope that in some time in the future I'll actually get to see you all in person. Enjoy the documentary and the DVD. And till the next time we went, have fun and God bless!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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"Best of the Beatles," a program that airs on PBS on Wednesday, Sept. 28, at 8 p.m. ET, is the untold story of the world's most famous band's formative years -- seen through the eyes of original Beatles drummer Pete Best. Best discussed the Beatles, his life and career and the PBS film.
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Today there are thousands of Americans who have had themselves tested for the gene for Huntington's Disease and know they will get it. They've seen a parent suffer with it or die from it. But there's still no cure. As genetic testing advances, more and more Americans could find themselves in similar positions, dreading an all-too-familiar fate. In an article in Sunday's Outlook section, Dr. Martha Nance , a Minneapolis neurologist who runs a Parkinson's Disease clinic and who is doing research on treatments for Huntington's, discusses the moving tale of one person who has the gene and the race to find a way to treat people like him.
Dr. Martha Nance was online Monday, Sept. 26, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss her Sunday Outlook article, An Uncertain Journey Along the Genetic Trail .
Arlington, Va.: Dr. Nance: Thank you for taking my question. I've received differential diagnoses from many doctors about my dad. He's been diagnosed with Parkinson's Syndrome and has severe delusions and memory loss, including having "forgotten" how to walk (biologically, he should be able to walk but cannot). These first came about after a stomach surgery, and he was diagnosed with Parkinson's a few months later. How common is it to have delusions as the first onset symptom of Parkinson's Syndrome?
Dr. Martha Nance: It would be unusual to have delusions as the first symptom of PD, but not impossible. Other possibilities include Lewy Body Disease, in which the motor features of PD are combined with hallucinations and dementia, or dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) where delusions might be very common and loss of motor abilities could also occur.
Fennimore, Wis.: Over the last few years there seems to be more awareness of Huntington's Disease, but Juvenile Huntington's Disease is not mentioned. For parents of these JHD children it is a nightmare that we live with with very little support or knowledge from the medical profession. This rare and devastating disease takes our children from us cell by cell. Will the future hold more research on the juvenile form of this disease? How can we as parents make the world more aware of JHD?
Dr. Martha Nance: Wow! All the juvenile HD parents are at the front of the line asking questions. I have written a book, published by the HD Society of America, about juvenile HD. It is also possible to network with other JHD families over the Internet, and that can be very helpful. As with adult HD, though, you will end up having to find out what resources you need, and what resources are available in your community. If you do not get enough support from the HD community, you may get support by banding with other parents whose children have other devastating neurologic diseases of childhood; the resources available will be similar whether it is HD or Tay Sachs disease or some other severe neurodegenerative disorder.
Posen, Ill.: My husband tested positive in 2003 with a CAG repeat of 42..Does the Cag repeat represent any thing to do with the disease? He is 54 now..And I would say he is in the mid stages of the disease..How long is it before he gets worse? Thank you.
Dr. Martha Nance: In general, the larger a CAG repeat number is, the later the onset age tends to be, but the relationship is not firm, so you cannot predict exactly what age you will get symptoms just by knowing the repeat number. Once the disease begins, it progresses gradually over years, often twenty years or more. Some people seem to progress more quickly than others--
For the past ten years, one of my HD wife's chief complaints has been long and sustained hot flashes. She will constantly have the air conditioner, several fans and an ice pack on her (even in the winter).
It's a very miserable condition for her. Are there any remedies and is this a common complaint?
Dr. Martha Nance: Many people with HD seem to be metabolically "overactive", so that they are hot when other people are cool or comfortable. I do not know of a better solution than to dress as appropriate for how the person feels (but avoid dangerous things like going outside without a coat in the winter), use fans, drink adequate fluids. Some medications may contribute to "hot flashes", so check with your doctor about that. Finally, middle aged women can have hot flashes due to normal hormone changes, unrelated to HD.
Clearwater, Fla.: Dear Dr. Nance
I am excited for all HD families that you have this opportunity, through The Washington Post, to educate people on Huntington's Disease! As you know, my only child, Kelly, died from the juvenile form of this horrific disease in 1998. Juvenile Huntington's Disease (JHD) typically is more insidious (if possible] then the adult version because an affected child's CAG repeats are in the higher ranges, therefore the duration of illness can progress at a faster rate.
There are thousands of children and young adults diagnosed with JHD in the United States, and even more living at-risk. The Huntington's Disease Society of America -HDSA Huntington's Disease Society of America , in recognition of my daughter's fight against HD, honors a family each year at their national convention who courageously bring awareness to Juvenile HD in their communities. As one of the adult advisors to the HDSA's National Youth Alliance -NYA- I know, first hand, the impact to these young people having the disease and/or living at risk who are trying to make theirs THE last generation of HD. So many of these same children are a part of the 1+ million children in the USA today who take care, or help take care of, a sick or disabled family member-.
The majority of current literature on Huntington's Disease indicates that the youngest known case of Juvenile Huntington's Disease -JHD is two years old. Today, we know of children as young as 6 months old being diagnosed with the juvenile form of HD. Yet, the world-at-large -not to mention so many of the neurologists and other physician's], remain totally unaware of the significant number of children and teenagers with this disease!
In light of this, my question to you is:
What is being done in research today to help us better understand Juvenile Huntington's Disease in hope not only for a cure or something to stop the progression of the disease, but to help these families provide the BEST quality of life and care to their children with JHD?
Thank you Dr. Nance and The Washington Post!
-1 million U.S. children are caregivers
By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
URL: 1 million U.S. children are caregivers.
Dr. Martha Nance: Hi, Jean. Thank you very much for pointing out to all the importance of organizations like the Huntington's Disease Society of America!
You are correct that the main focus of clinical research in HD is on the adults who make up about 90% of affected individuals. However, one could argue that the mouse models of HD used in laboratories are actually models of juvenile HD, as the HD gene mutations put into their cells more closely resemble those of children with HD than adults.
Regarding care for children with HD, I am working with a committee of doctors and researchers headed by an HD specialist in Europe to introduce a worldwide effort to improve care for juvenile HD. Stay tuned over the next year or two as we increase our efforts.
Fairfax, Va.: My son was diagnosed with Sandhoff's disease a year ago and has since had a stem cell bone marrow transplant at Duke Children's Hospital. Is this a possible treatment for Huntington's too?
Dr. Martha Nance: Stem cell transplants are not yet possible for Huntington's disease, although researchers are looking for ways to make this approach work. The cells that are affected first in HD are called "medium spiny neurons"--they are part of a "middle management" network of cells in the brain, and may be hard to convince stem cells to take on the characteristics of these type of neurons.
Washington, D.C.: Hi Martha. My name is Libby Labash and I serve as VP of the Chesapeake Chapter of the National Ataxia Foundation. We have met at several of our annual medical meetings. My husband suffers from Ataxia which is a CAG repeat disease as I believe Huntington's is. Your article really hit home - I could really relate to your friend's comments. I've read a lot about neurodegenerative diseases coming about as a result of the inflammation resulting from these accumulating pieces of protein that cannot be recycled as they "fold" improperly. What work is being done to test the impact of "anti-inflammatory" drugs with these diseases?
My husband has suffered stoically from Ataxia for 20 years. We appreciate the research which is painfully slow but so yearn for something hopeful. It seems like every research article I read ends with "someday".
In the corporate world we typically put a timeline on getting results which I find beneficial. Is this an issue in the world of medical research?
Thank you for your continued support and your concern.
I have a an appointment today that will cause me to miss your live comments.
Dr. Martha Nance: Hi Libby! Yes, please insert the word "hereditary ataxia" wherever you saw the work "Huntington disease" in the article. The general ideas and thrust of research are the same for these diseases. A study has just begun looking at the role of ethyl-EPA (the active ingredient in fish oil) in HD--and the thought is that some of its effects may be anti-inflammatory.
It is hard to put a time-frame on research discoveries, but the HDSA has tried to create and fund a research structure that encourages the continuum of basic science to "translational science" through to drug trials, with some accountability and time frames, deadlines, etc. We will see how well that works--
Dubuque, Iowa: What drugs do you recommend Hungtington's patients be taking, and what vitamins?
Dr. Martha Nance: appropriate drugs depend on the symptoms. There is no drug that you have to take because you have HD. Regarding vitamins, none have any proven effects, but the things people talk about include Vitamin E (with the recent report suggesting that doses >400IU/day can be harmful), multivitamins, which would cover any nutritional deficiencies, perhaps the B-vitamins, which are important for the brain, fish oil or omega-fatty acids--in standard doses, and Coenzyme Q10. There is a lot of research interest in CoQ10, although again no proof that it slows the course of the disease, and the doses that are being considered for research trials are very high--over 1,000mg/day. The decision about how much of what vitamin to take has to be made by the individual, knowing that there is no proof they will help at all! And do let your doctor know what you are taking.
Thank you for answering questions today. I was moved by your editorial. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the age of 64. Four years later, the disease has taken a terrible toll on my mother and our entire family. In addition to constant worry about our mother, my siblings and I are terrified by the possibility that we will also get the disease. There does not seem to be hopeful research about preventing Alzheimer's disease. (Crossword puzzles? Exercise? Wine?) Current medication only prolongs a difficult disease. What can we do to further effective research into these terrible diseases? Thank you.
Dr. Martha Nance: Beat the drums and work cooperatively with the appropriate lay organizations. Write letters to your congressmen supporting scientific research (and not just research on your disease of interest--sometimes the most amazing breakthroughs come from someone who was originally working on a different problem or in a different area). Make your story known to people around you, and participate in research trials when they become available.
Baltimore, Md.: Hi Dr. Nance, I'd be interested in your feelings about gene therapy as a potential treatment for Huntingtons, Parkinsons, etc....
Dr. Martha Nance: Gene therapy may more quickly be applied to HD than to PD or AD, because HD is clearly a genetic disease. A very exciting "gene therapy" approach under study today is the idea of "gene silencing" by means of "RNA interference"--a recently discovered cell mechanism that has the ability to stop a gene from being expressed. Delivering the interfering RNA to the brain cells at the right time is the trick--and proving that the interfering RNA only blocks the gene of interest and not any other gene...Stay tuned, it is an exciting possibility!
Omro, Wis.: Why does HD affect kids so differently?
When will there be some decent studies of JHD children?
Dr. Martha Nance: Thank you to all of the JHD people for writing in. I mentioned earlier a plan to become involved with a European group spearheading a worldwide JHD initiative--stay in touch and we will see how that pans out...
L'Anse, Mich.: Dear Dr. Nance,
My name is Jane and I'm 38. I'm a care giver to my youngest daughter Karli, age 9, and my husband Karl, age 44, both of whom have Huntington's Disease and both of whom are in mid stage. I also have a 12 year old daughter, for whom we are awaiting the gene test results, a 15 year old daughter at risk, and a 19 year old daughter who is away at college.
As you know our story is only one of thousands here in the United States alone. There are a multitude of issues I face in care each day. Due to the limited awareness about this disease (particularly JHD) much of my time is spent seeking information resources and support to try to ensure everyone has the BEST quality of life. I have had the privilege to meet many amazing people along the way, "everyday heroes" whose love, compassion and strength always amaze me. I've met a lot of people who find it within their hearts to want to help make a difference for families such as ours, many of whom aren't quite sure how to help and many of whom have been my hope for that moment.
Often while seeking out services weather it be for therapy services,respite care, counseling, intervention or whatever happens to be the need of the day I find that Huntington's Disease and or the multiple number of family members in my home afflicted with HD doesn't fall into any one category. Often I find that help is often based on being reactive rather than proactive. Often I feel like a pioneer navigating my way through unknown territory. I have always tried to be proactive out of need. My daughter and I have had the privilege to partake in the national ad campaign "The Many Faces of HD" and a number of other events to try and be proactive in generating awareness. We are hopeful this might be our last generation of HD and our experiences might help other families gain the help and support they need with less resistance.
My questions for you Dr. Nance are beyond generating awareness how do I proactively meet my families needs? How do I help our families needs fit the programs available? example:with HD/JHD therapy is habilitative in need rather than rehabilitative, however, the frame of thought can be to discharge a patient once they plateau. Is it possible to proactively manage my husbands symptoms including aggression, mania and paranoia prior to anything harmful happening to anyone when he is resistant to care? What resources are available to assist others in understanding or assisting others to help us help our loved ones? Is there a person or organization the specializes in helping to manage the multiple needs for a family as ours, to help ease care giver burden,and help provide more quality care?
Thank you Dr. Nance and the Washington Post!
Dr. Martha Nance: Hi, Jane! You and I share the use of the word "proactive" in describing what is desirable and hardly ever accomplished in HD. I would argue that this is to a certain extent a general problem in medicine, that we see patients in our offices because of a problem and then address that problem, and only in the context of general physical exams does it dawn on us to be proactive (and by the way, specialists like neurologists don't do general physical exams, we ONLY see people with problems). So part of the problem is changing the whole nature of the medical encounter. Or perhaps you work with your primary care doctor on the proactive aspects of your care (after educating that doctor about the particular disease you are dealing with). Or you have to teach your neurologist to think proactively, by asking questions like, is there anything we should be thinking about to plan for the future? Do you think we will need a wheelchair? in-home nursing? nursing home? etc etc.
Rehab therapies are only paid for by insurers for a finite period of time, although we all believe that continued exercise is a good thing. But medical insurers will not pay for "maintenance" therapy.
Wherever you go, you will find that you have to educate (and re-educate) the various care providers that your husband works with. I do not know of an organization that specializes in meeting the multiple needs of families with neurodegenerative diseases; organizations like HDSA and others help to provide information for you and for caregivers and health providers about the disease, and local MDs and social workers and nurses can help you access what resources are available in your community. The same questions and problems apply to people with PD and Alzheimer's and many other chronic diseases, unfortunately...
Washington, D.C.: Dear Dr. Nance, I would like to know - given advances in gege therapy and stem cell research - whether it is possible for parents with HD to give birth to a baby without HD by removing the HD defective gene in the laboratory or by stem cell therapy of therapeutic cloning.
Dr. Martha Nance: Gene therapy and stem cell therapy are not here today for HD. However, it may be possible to have a child that is known to be free of the HD gene by using a technology called "nondisclosing preimplantation testing". In this technique, the woman takes fertility drugs, and the eggs are removed, the man's sperm are used to fertilize the eggs in test tubes, the embryos are allowed to develop up to about the 8-cell stage, and one cell is removed for genetic testing. Only an embryo free of the abnormal HD gene is implanted into the woman. This can be done without revealing whether the at-risk member of the couple actually has the abnormal HD gene or not.
Clovis, Calif.: Dr. Nance, First of all, I would like to say thank you for your hard work towards treating and educating people about HD. With that said, I have a question for you. Even though I have been involved with HD for years as a caregiver for my loved ones, I can't seem to find a answer to what the standard vitamin/supplement standard is. I realize that because there seems to be no "proven" benefit, that it is just guess work. But, it seems if you ask 20 different people what they are taking or has been recommended by their docs, you will get 20 different answers. I know there's fish oil, Q-10, antioxidents, etc., but is there any general guideline for where to start? I am referring to both adult and Juvenile HD. Also, would these be a benefit to someone with Alzheimer's, as well? Thank you for your time!
Dr. Martha Nance: I answered a similar question moments ago. It is hard for doctors to be specific about what dose of a treatment with no proven benefit you "should" be taking, and the answer gets intertwined with the doctor's own views, beliefs, and opinions, as well as medical-legal concerns about "recommending" a treatment of no proven benefit. With all those disclaimers, things that people talk a lot about include Vitamin E (latest evidence suggests that >400 IU/day can be bad); fish oil or omega fatty acids, in usual doses; multivitamins in standard doses; B-vitamins, in usual doses (perhaps people with PD who take levodopa should take higher doses of folate, as you use up folate when you metabolize levodopa, but there is no proof that you live longer or better with PD if you take folate, and no clue what "higher doses" might mean); and Coenzyme Q10. With CoQ10, research has pointed towards the possibility that very high doses (1200mg or more) may have benefits, but definitive proof is lacking.
Owings Mills, Md.: I am a 55 year-old male, diagnosed with HD, and part of Johns Hopkins Hospital Laxdale drug study for years. Coupled with an anti-depressant and decent exercise, I am feeling chipper. What gives? Thank you.
Dr. Martha Nance: If you are going to have any chronic disease, whether it is HD, diabetes, or Parkinson's, you will do better if you a) eat right, b) sleep well, c) exercise regularly (especially if you have a movement disorder), d) engage in activities that you enjoy or that make you feel good (which for some people includes participating in research), and e) have good spiritual health--acceptance without resignation. Congratulations to you on your good health, and pass it on!
Fairfax, Va.: Thank you for your article, Dr. Nance.
Like many who are at-risk for HD, I have come to the conclusion that it is better not to know whether I have the gene until there is progress towards a cure. Of course, I'm encouraged that several lines of research are being investigated and that clinical trials are beginning.
Unfortunately, my sister knows she has the gene. How would she find out about participating in one of these trials? Also, if it turned out that I did have the gene, I would want to stop onset as soon as possible. Would it be possible or advisable for me to participate in a clinical trial even though I haven't been tested?
Dr. Martha Nance: PREDICT-HD is a research study that has almost completed enrollment, designed for people who have had a gene test but do not have symptoms yet. PHAROS is a research study that has completed enrollment, designed for people who have not had a gene test. COHORT is a research study coming soon to evaluate anyone and everyone from HD families. All three are "natural history studies", meaning that you are free to take any treatments you would ordinarily take while participating in the study. All three studies are being conducted by the Huntington Study Group, which has a Web site at which you can get more details about these and other HSG studies.
Washington, D.C.: Hello Dr. Nance. This is Gene Veritas, the person about whom you wrote in your article. I want to thank you for raising the profile of Huntington's disease. I wanted to point out that people can read more about living at risk at my blog at http://www.curehd.blogspot.com/ . Or they can e-mail me at stophuntingtonsdisease@yahoo.com. My question is: it seems that curing HD could prove to be the Rosetta stone for curing many other neurological maladies. Can you comment on this observation and the need to have greater public support for HD research?
Dr. Martha Nance: Hi, Gene, and thank you for giving me the inspiration, actually--more than that--being the reason--for this article! You are correct that the answers to HD may in fact be, or may quickly lead to, much better answers for other more common diseases like PD, Alzheimer's, and ALS. Just as is the case for cancer, there are similarities (and probably some differences as well, but let us focus on the similarities for now) between different types of neurodegenerative diseases. So a drug that slows down nerve cell degeneration in HD may also slow down nerve cell degeneration in AD or PD too. There are likely also to be unique aspects to each disease, so there may be treatments that are special for one or another disease that would not work for the others.
In addition, if we want to start treatments very early in the course of the disease, perhaps even before the doctor can clearly diagnose the disease, then the best disease to study first is HD, as we have the ability to know in advance who will one day develop HD. We do not yet have that ability for PD or AD. But if a treatment slows HD in the very earliest stages, then maybe it would do so also in the other diseases....That is an exciting thought!
My wife and I have a very close 25-year old niece who recently tested positive for the HD gene, which she inherited from her father who is in the mid-to-late stages of HD. I don't know the details of her test results as my knowledge of HD is limited. Our niece seems to be handling this news remarkable well (at least among her family). My question is how can we best support her through this?
Dr. Martha Nance: I would support her by emphasizing the importance of wellness. Now that she knows she will some day develop HD, she should pay particular attention to her overall health, her spiritual wellness, her physical health and stamina. It is also a good time to plan appropriately for the future--financially, logistically, becoming knowledgeable about the disease, and so on. For some, it is important to be involved in advocacy, research, etc, while for others it is much more important to live every aspect of their life BESIDES HD as fully as possible now.
Washington, D.C.: Dr. Nance, please clarify whether parents in the 21st century can truly say they are "unknowingly" giving birth to a baby with HD? Can't the defective HD gene be removed in the laboratory so that the parent can give birth to a healthy baby without HD?
Dr. Martha Nance: the defective gene cannot be removed in the laboratory. Most parents at risk for HD do not undergo any type of genetic testing or treatment, but have children in the natural fashion, as is their right. Each child of a person who has HD carries a 50% risk of having inherited the gene and therefore developing the disease one day. One of the very difficult parts of the disease, though, is that people often have children at a time in their lives when they do not yet know whether they will develop the disease or not. The choice to find out one's own genetic situation before the onset of symptoms is a very difficult one, and the vast majority of people in the US do not undergo "predictive" testing to find out whether they carry the abnormal gene or not.
Washington, D.C.: The part of the article that absolutely took my breath away was the person who, knowing they could be a carrier, had children without finding out if they were a carrier.
How could anyone take that kind of risk with their childrens' lives? What on earth are they thinking?
Dr. Martha Nance: Actually, one of the most anxiety-provoking parts of Gene's story was that he and his wife DID undergo genetic testing for their fetus, with the fears, guilt, and uncertainties that go along with that. The decision to undergo any kind of genetic testing, whether for oneself or a fetus, is a very difficult and personal one, and people's opinions vary widely on their use. The majority of people at-risk for HD in the US do not have predictive genetic tests, and the majority of at-risk couples do not undergo prenatal testing.
I just wanted to say thanks for a terrific piece that captured the difficulty for HD families and their loved ones at risk.
I also wanted to alert readers in this D.C. metro area that there are 2 support groups nearby where people can go for questions, comments, and a shoulder to lean on. Both are run by the Washington Metro Chapter of the Huntington's Disease Society of America and bioth are run by social workers.
People should not hesitate to call our office with questions about the support groups or if they need other information about HD. The chapter can be reached at 703-323-1403.
Thanks for all the time and work you give towards fighting HD.
Dr. Martha Nance: Thank you very much!
Owings Mills, Md.: I am a 55-year old male, diagnosed with HD by Johns Hopkins Hospital. I have been part of their Laxdale drug study for years. With Paxil and exercise, I feel ok until these type events come along. What gives?
Dr. Martha Nance: Keep up the good work and the exercise! Be happy for the good days, and don't sweat the senior moments...
Washington, D.C.: My husband suffers from Huntington's but is in total denial. It is therefore difficult to try to get him help. Are there any treatments that improve the quality of life for Huntington's patients? Would it be of value to try to make my husband face the inevitable? Or can we try to address some of the symptoms without forcing him to admit that he has disease. Would a GP be able to offer any help or do we have to go to one of the local Huntington's center?
Dr. Martha Nance: A GP may well be able to help and may be less threatening to your husband than an "HD expert." I have had some patients whom I can never get to accept any kind of treatment, but others seem to have thinner layers of denial and allow discussion and treatment of their symptoms even if they do not acknowledge the diagnosis of HD!
For those, who live in the Washington, D.C. area desiring assistance/information on Huntington's Disease: The Washington Area Huntington's Disease Society of America Chapter help line phone number is 703-204-4634. There are two support groups meeting in the Washington, D.C. area, one in Kensington, Maryland and one is Northern Virginia, near Falls Church. Social workers attend each meeting. I am a care giver and have attended the Falls Church group for five years.
Dr. Martha Nance: Thank you!
Anonymous: I think it's the larger the repeat the earlier the onset with HD.
Dr. Martha Nance: In general, larger repeat numbers are associated with earlier onset ages, but there are clearly other factors that play a role. We just haven't identified what those factors are yet. But you can't compare repeat numbers with your brother or friend and be sure who is going to get the disease earlier or later just based purely on the repeat number
Springfield, Va.: My father had HD and died about 35 years ago. His onset was at about age 30. What are the chances that I, now 71, will also get the disorder?
Dr. Martha Nance: You can't help thinking your risk is much lower than the 50% it was when you were born, but if I were speaking to you in my clinic, I would emphasize the thought that we cannot ever be sure that the risk is 0. Some people chose to undergo a gene test at your age, just so that they can be clear to their descendants that there is or is not any risk at all to them.
Your piece was fascinating and heartbreaking. I find it completely appalling that your college friend and others like him cannot even risk getting tested under their own names, without suffering significant prejudice including, but not limited to, the loss of their livelihoods and disability insurance.
Do you see any way around this?
Dr. Martha Nance: There are laws coming state by state to prevent health insurers from having access to this kind of information, but there is no way to prevent the potential personal stigma associated with genetic tests and risk. In fact, when we looked, we found that more men than women chose to undergo genetic testing for HD anonymously, and that their stated reason was more related to professional and personal issues than to concerns about insurance. If your boss ever knew that you and the other guy were both up for promotion and that you had the abnormal HD gene, who might get the promotion??
Washington, D.C.: "Most parents at risk for HD do not undergo any type of genetic testing or treatment, but have children in the natural fashion, as is their right."
Ah yes, their "right" to bear children who will suffer and die young. Their "right" to condemn someone other than themselves to pain. Their "right" to create a child who will have to watch them die horribly and see his or her future in that death.
That's not something that a loving parent would do.
Dr. Martha Nance: On the other hand, music in America would not be the same had Woody Guthrie and his son Arlo not existed, or if my many patients who are successful doctors, lawyers, teachers, mothers, artists, children, etc etc etc not existed. One could even argue that HD is part of what gave Woody Guthrie his creative genius. This is a point that one can debate endlessly, and I would prefer not to continue the argument.
Dr. Martha Nance: I thank all of you for your questions; please continue to ask questions, to demand answers, to support those around you who have HD and other neurodegnerative diseases, and to advocate for the support for research to find better answers to the problems posed by these diseases!
Dayton, Tenn.: In response to "How can someone unknowingly pass on this gene?" My husband did not have a family history. We had not idea HD was in his background until he was finally diagnosed in his 50's. Our daughter was in her mid teens. Ten years later she has tested positive. I will not share more as I know every HD family has experiences that are unique and devastating. However, God has given us peace and hope while allowing us to have the presence of mind to begin planning for the future that may be. I thank him daily for the two greatest blessings of my life- my children. Thank you.
Dr. Martha Nance: thank you--
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/09/23/DI2005092301029.html
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https://web.archive.org/web/2005092619id_/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2005/09/23/DI2005092301029.html
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Dr. Gridlock
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2005092619
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Since 1986, Ron Shaffer , better known as Dr. Gridlock , writes his column for The Washington Post, Dr. Gridlock Column . In it he tracks the region's traffic woes, finds the correct officials to answer drivers' questions and responds to some of the hundreds of letters he receives each month. He describes himself as "the Ann Landers of commuters."
Dr. Gridlock was online Sept. 12, at 1:00 p.m. ET .
Dr. Gridlock appears Sunday in the Metro section and Thursday in Extra. You can write to him at 1150 15th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. He prefers to receive e-mail, at drgridlock@washpost.com , or faxes, at 703-352-3908. Please include your full name, town, county and day and evening phone numbers.
Dr. Gridlock: Hello, folks. Welcome to another Dr. Gridlock chat. I'm here to feel your pain. Questions and comments welcome. Here we go...
Washington, D.C.: Re: Space Hoggers are not necessarily obese -- What bothers me are male riders who, while slim, sit with their knees akimbo so their thighs jut over their portion of the seat, seemingly oblivious to that fact that I don't want their upper legs pushing against mine. Is it physiologically uncomfortable for most men to sit with legs together? I don't expect them to have their knees clamped tight and ankles crossed, but I find this habit more annoying than sitting next to heavy people who at least are trying, by sitting up straight and holding their legs together, to keep themselves from spreading over their half of the seat area.
Dr. Gridlock: Insensitive men. They come in all sizes. Note Lisa Farbsteins comment at the top of this chat.
Discontent, D.C.: What will it take to get Metro to provide TIMELY updates of system outages? While I subscribe, both at home and at work, to Metro's e-mail service, there was no warning about this morning's 45-minute delay on the Orange Line (allegedly due to a "serious problem" at Stadium-Armory.) There was nothing on Metro's Web site either. In an age when commuters worry about safety, shouldn't Metro provide timely, accurate information about system delays?
Dr. Gridlock: Yes. I believe about 30,000 customers subscribe to Metro's e-alerts, and you should be notified of such disruptions. I have not received another complaint, so perhaps this was an exception...
Washington, D.C.: Is there any hope of re-opening E Street near the Ellipse?
After the Oklahoma City bombing, E Street was closed, re-routed away from the White House, and then reopened. Then after 9/11 Bush closed it again, even though it is further away from the government buildings than 15th and 17th Streets, which run right along the Old and New Executive Office Buildings. There is no reason to keep E Street closed. (I note that the White House now uses E Street to access the Ellipse parking, which used to be public but has now become a private parking lot for White House employees--apparently the only reason E Street is closed.)
In the alternative, could D.C. (funded by the Feds, since they closed E Street) place a right turn signal from northbound 17th Street, NW, to H Street. Right now those of us driving that route to get around the White House (because E Street is closed) are not allowed to turn right on red, and on green, have to wait for all of the Metro pedestrians to cross the street, which means that sometimes only one car gets through.
Dr. Gridlock: Here's how streets around the White House works: The feds perceive a security threat, and close the street. Even though the streets belong to the city. The city is not consulted. That's how Pennsylvania Avenue became closed in front of The White House. No, I don't see E Street being reopened. Security will always take precedent over commuter issues.
I think your point about a right turn arrow from nbound 17th onto H Street is a good one. I"ll bring it up with the city...
Metro Media Relations: I was distressed to read your column on Sunday where you ran letters from people who are prejudiced against fat people.
Metro is a public transit authority. That means that everybody has a right to use it, and it's subject to all the things people like and don't like about public spaces. The people who wrote in might not like sitting next to a larger person, but there are also folks who don't like sitting next to someone who wears perfume and scented products. Others don't like to sit near children who are squirming or screaming, or are in a double stroller. Some people who don't like to sit near people who disturb the peace with inadequate headphones. And there are people who don't like it when they are subjected to loud conversations, many on cell phones. All of these examples of people in public spaces can be every bit as invasive as being crowded in one's seat.
If you don't like who's sitting next to you, you have an instant and 100 percent effective solution available to you -- get up and move.
Metro is not in the business of promoting prejudice and bigotry. People come in all sorts of different bodies, and they all have every right to ride Metro.
--Lisa Farbstein, Spokesperson for Metro
Dr. Gridlock: Well said, Lisa. I think people are entitled to their views even if we disagree with them. The column provides a forum for opposing views. As you may have noted, I agreed with you.
Arlington, Va.: Three Questions ... Why are 66 and 295/BWI PKWY still only two lanes? Why are there so many poorly timed lights in the area? Why is an entire direction of 66 a H.O.V. lane in the morning and afternoon?
Dr. Gridlock: Pick one. And if it's the last one, please clarify. Are you talking about I-66 inside the Beltway?
Alexandria, Va.: I got a parking ticket in Georgetown for "Parking in a Failed Meter". I thought you were allowed to park in a failed meter for as long as the meter allows. This was a two hour meter and I was there for about an hour and a half when the ticket was written. Also, there is no indication on the ticket of how long I was parked there, just a notice that it was written at 6:05 p.m. How should I proceed in order to have this fine dropped?
Dr. Gridlock: The city places the burden of proving a broken meter on you. The thing to do is jot down the number in the meter dome, and call the phone number listed there to report a broken meter.
In your appeal, you can claim the meter was broken and you reported it. Hopefully, by then the city will have sent a field inspection crew out to confirm the meter is broken.
Bottom line, park at failed meters at your peril.
Bethesda, Md.: I don't know if this has been offered as a possible explanation as to why people are leaving so much space between them and the car in front of them at red lights: I've seen police instructions for ways to avoid carjacking, which include leaving substantial space in front of you during red lights so that you can pull out quickly if someone tries to get into your car. I wonder if these police departments realize that this may be causing another traffic problem.
Dr. Gridlock: Which happens more frequently, carjacking or widely spaced vehicles cutting off access to turning lanes?
I think it's the latter, and thus think we ought to pull up to allow those behind access to turn lanes.
I get maybe 10,000 letters a year, and can't remember one that has complained of car jacking.
Washington, D.C.: Thanks for publishing replies to Lynn Wood's suggestion that obese Metro riders be charged double. It might be reasonable for there to be a standard that if you take more than the "normal" amount of space, you pay more. This would include the obese, unusually tall people, perhaps some pregnant women, those with luggage, strollers, shopping carts. You can see how quickly this gets out of hand. Witch Wood's suggestion seems less about people taking up only their allotted amount of space, than her issues with obese people. (I'm not defending obesity -- it's an unhealthy behavior. But it is really none of her business since as I listed there are many other passengers who are taking up extra space.)
Dr. Gridlock: It's interesting to contrast the view of Southwest Airlines, which will have heavyset people sit in a regular seat, and then charge them for two seats if they don't fit.
While Metro does not apply any standard for size. I'm thinking the reason is that Southwest carries only a small number of passengers a day compared to Metro's 800,000, and to try it on Metro would be too unwieldy. Besides, if you look back at Ms. Farbstein's comments today, Metro would think the Southwest example is prejudiced towards large people...
Washington, D.C.: Have to vent. Why do people NOT yield to people in the traffic circles? I wait until traffic is clear to enter the Chevy Chase circle only to have to brake for someone scooting in front of me at the next entrance. It drives me crazy -- not to mention I have my baby in the backseat and get nervous about these non-yielders. Please, everyone have the courtesy to wait for circle traffic to clear before trying to enter.
Dr. Gridlock: The guideline when entering is to look left and yield to traffic in the circle. Maybe some people don't observe that...
Alexandria, Va.: I would give Metro a "D" this weekend. They schedule track maintenance on Saturday and Sunday, when there were major events scheduled on the Mall. The line at the Smithsonian Metro at 5 was across the Mall. The messages that we got in the Metro system were garbled. I can imagine how it would be if there were a real disaster.
Dr. Gridlock: That's complaint number two about garbled announcements at the Smithsonian station. Hope Lisa Farbstein is monitoring this chat, and can also tell us why Metro scheduled track maintenance with events on the Mall...
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.: I realize that garbage must be picked up, but who was the genius that scheduled pick up on Patrick and Henry Streets (that's Route 1) in Alexandria? Note to Alexandria government: Having your garbage truck stopping every 15 feet on Route 1 during morning rush hour creates a hazard.
Who should I contact to suggest a change?
Dr. Gridlock: Call the city at 838-4300 and ask for Richard Baer, director of Transportation and Public Works.
Garbage pickup on Route 1 during rush hours seems wrong to me.
Rockville, Md.; Montgomery County: Dear Dr. Gridlock: I'm concerned that public address announcements are virtually impossible to understand in the Smithsonian Metro station. Is this a problem in other stations? In an emergency, Metro officials will almost surely use the PA system to communicate with passengers. Lives may depend on the clarity of these instructions.
Dr. Gridlock: I haven't heard of this one. You can file a complaint with Metro at (202) 637-1328.
Washington, D.C.: Is the proposed ICC going to be just an expanded Norbeck Road, or are they going to do more? Are there any reliable maps/sites out there that show exactly which areas are going to be impacted by this throughway? When is construction projected to begin?
Dr. Gridlock: For details, log on to www.marylandroads.com and click to the link (upper right) for the Inter County Connector.
If things progress, construction could start next year with completion by 2010.
Waldorf, Md.: Southern Marylanders commuting north on 301/5 have had a miserable two weeks with construction barrels blocking the left lane at Southern Maryland Hospital in Clinton. This is the start of the third week with not a worker or truck in sight. Traffic is bumper to bumper from Mattawoman Beantown Rd. until clearing the hospital -- approx. 8 miles. A call to state highway said it was a private contractor installing a double left turn lane for Surratts Rd. Many questions arise: Why wasn't it done during the summer when traffic is a lot lighter? Why have the lanes been blocked off so long without even starting? Why is the Northbound left lane blocked when construction is slated south of the light? When is construction going to start and when will it end? We surely do need some traffic relief. The right shoulder lane has been opened to thru traffic which helps a little but that is an accident waiting to happen as cars seem to ignore the "no merge area" when exiting Surratts Rd. onto northbound Rt 5.
Dr. Gridlock: I will ask and respond in the printed column if you will kindly give me your hometown. Few things irritate motorists more than construction sites with no one working...
Is there a way to learn in advance which entrances to 395-South in Virgina will be closed Saturday for paving? The past two weeks VDOT closed entrance ramps with no advance warning. For someone new to the area who doesn't know the back roads, this must be a nightmare. Why doesn't VDOT let one know an exit will be closed a few hundred yards ahead, vs. waiting until one is right on top of the ramp and has no other place to go? Anarchy!
Dr. Gridlock: Try (703) 383-VDOT for that information. It is unusual to have an I-395 exit closed.
Arlington, Va.: Dear Dr. Gridlock, I wanted to share a scary experience with you that I had last week on Rt 110 in Arlington. For those of you not familiar with it, it is a 45 MPH highway that goes around the east side of the Pentagon. I was about to exit onto 395 South, when I had to slam on my brakes in order not to hit a bicyclist that was riding in the shoulder. He crossed the exit at the same time that I was about to exit off. Luckily no one rear-ended me, since it was rush hour, and I managed not to kill him or myself in the process. While I respect bicyclists, I think it's very foolish to bike on a highway, especially one that is parallel to two bike trails (the Mt. Vernon trail and a connecter trail that goes to the Pentagon.)
Dr. Gridlock: We are instructed that bicyclists are entitled to a lane of traffic the same way automobiles are. But does that mean it's okay to ride on an expressway? I don't think so. Too dangerous.
Chinatown, D.C.: Dr.G: On H Street, NW, next to the Calvary Baptist Church, there is a construction fence that takes up one lane of traffic and the sidewalk -- forcing pedestrians out into the street. The construction of the church's new steeple at this point was finished months ago. The only activity inside the fence on H now is parking for construction workers working on the building around the corner on 8th. What can we do to get our sidewalk back?
Dr. Gridlock: Call the mayor's hotline at 202 727 1000. Sounds like the construction crew is exceeding its permit. The city does not allow workers to fence off a lane of traffic for their workers. I recently sent the city out to check on one area, and they issued a fine and warned the crew not to do that.
let me know how this works out. and be sure to be specific where this is, what block, what corner...
Silver Spring, Md.: Doc, I heard the Montrose Parkway was started -- and I saw some clearing going on near Randolph Road and the Pike -- is that the start of the famed Parkway to nowhere?
Dr. Gridlock: I'm behind on that one, Larry. Anyone out there have some information?
Who do I contact about a bad signage decision that was apparently made recently. I am referring to the removal of the no U-turn sign on 123 South at the corner of 123 and Blake Lane in Oakton. It is extremely dangerous to allow people to make U-turns at that intersection, and since I noticed the sign disappear about two months ago, there has already been one major accident at that intersection (none in the previous six years as far as I can tell). Thank you.
Dr. Gridlock: Start with (703) 383-VDOT. Let me know if you hit a dead end...
Greenbelt, Md.: How long do new traffic signals have to sit at an intersection before they're switched on? In my neighborhood the new lights appear (to me) to be all installed and ready to go, but they're still dark and covered with burlap.
Dr. Gridlock: You have to tell me how long they have appeared to be finished. It can be a week or two for the power people to make a hookup, but if this is extended to months, I'd check with the Maryland state highway administration, chuck Gischlar at (410) 545-0311. Tell him Dr. Gridlock sent you.
Herndon, Va.: Why is it that one never sees police patrolling the beltway on the weekends? I make the drive from Herndon to Silver Spring every Saturday and Sunday and have never seen a police officer on the road (outside of accident clean-ups). Yesterday I was nearly driven off the road by 2 teenagers drag racing in the middle of heavy traffic at 4 in the afternoon near the curvy section by Conn. Ave. It seems to me if there was a larger police presence this kind of behavior would be abated.
Dr. Gridlock: My impression is just the opposite: Virginia State Police are out and about at nights and on weekends, while you don't see them during rush hours.
I've seen their radar traps on the weekends.
Washington, D.C.: I am convinced that if a Katrina-like disaster struck D.C., within 48 hours the parking police would be out happily ticketing cars that floated to broken and expired parking meters.
Dr. Gridlock: What would the infraction be--illegal floating?
College Park, Md.: Your recent column about animals was great but didn't answer a question that has nagged at me for some time. About a decade ago, I hit a dog (that ran across the highway, coming out of nowhere) while driving south on the GW Parkway. The dog was injured, I was in the left lane and had nowhere to pull over, and I wasn't sure whether I really wanted to pull over to help a possibly angry, injured dog (this was in the days before I had a cell phone). I noticed, as I kept driving to a meeting, that other drivers did stop to tend to the dog. My car was damaged slightly, and I just still don't know whether I did the right thing.
Dr. Gridlock: I think you should pull over, left or right, as soon as it's safe to do so, and providing you and your vehicle are well out of traffic.
Then, I'd check on the animal. If you have a cell phone, call #77 to report an emergency (animal in traffic cars stopping suddenly).
If you don't have a cell phone, someone else will...
Failed Meter Follow-Up: The ticket actually says "Parked in Failed Meter".
Dr. Gridlock: Thanks. So that should end the question as to whether it's okay to park at a failed meter...
Arlington, Va.: Whoa. What's with the Left Hand Turners who hit the gas the second a light turns green (no arrow) in order to beat oncoming traffic? This seems like a t-bone accident waiting to happen (due to red light runners). I see this behavior every day at the intersection of Glebe Rd and Wilson Blvd in Arlington. Age/sex/race to not seem to play a role in who is an offender.
Dr. Gridlock: That is a good question. I'd like to get the view of the Arlington Police on that one. We've all seen this. It seems dangerous to me. What do you folks think?
Re: Illegal Floating: I believe the infraction would be Impeding the Flow.
Dr. Gridlock: Excellent. Or it could be "Parking at a Failed Meter (Underwater)"...
Silver Spring, Md.: It sure was different at Travelers Aid this weekend, telling people NOT to take the Metro into town because of the 38-minute train intervals.
Great advertisement for the out-of-towners.
Dr. Gridlock: I have found that if I want to find out something about transportation in or area, the good volunteers at the Traveler's Aid kiosks (at our airports) are a pretty good source. Bless them...
I should probably not answer this one, but for my awareness, guys are never taught to keep their knees together. I have been told that women have to pay attention to this while sitting. But on the Metro, this may or may not be intentional. One can always move and I often see people move from one car to the other at a Metro stop.
Dr. Gridlock: Guys should keep their knees together because open knees may place them into their co-passengers space. Seems like common courtesy...
Annapolis, Md.: I've been very disappointed by the progress of limiting speeding motorcycles on Rt 50 and Rt 3 in Maryland. Last night they were going at least 90 MPH crossing right across in front of from the HOV E Rt 50 towards the 495 entrance. I believe one nearly hit a sign they were weaving so crazy. I have never seen a cop pull these people over.
Dr. Gridlock: Because this is a continuous complaint, for years, and involving the same area (Maryland Route 50) I have to conclude that this is a major failure of the Maryland State Police. They seem to be winking at 90 mph rockets.
Call their public information office to complain (410)653-4239, and/or call the Maryland Governor's office.
I'll lean on state police again.
Bethesda, Md.: Regarding the left turn, I lived in Pittsburgh several years ago, and this was standard practice. We called it the "Pittsburgh Left" and knew to expect it when waiting at a red light, and avoided accelerating too quickly when a light changed green. Even started to do it sometimes, though only in Pittsburgh.
Dr. Gridlock: I think our reader was talking about motorists who zoom into a left turn from a red light-turning green, trying to get the jump on oncoming traffic.
I wonder if your Pittsburgh turn involves a cycle of the traffic light that protects such turns...
Maybe I'm missing something ...: but if you're right up behind the next car at a light, such that you couldn't get out if a carjacker came along, wouldn't the carjacker also have trouble moving the car? Plenty of getaway space seems like a carjacker's best friend to me.
Dr. Gridlock: Excellent point. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks..
Akimbo, USA: Maybe it is cultural. I know many Latin men who sit with their legs crossed (and don't look "gay" or any other such silliness). I know lots of American men who say it looks "funny" for a guy to sit with his legs together.
Dr. Gridlock: I don't care how men sit as long as they are not intruding on another person's space...That seems rude.
Alexandria, Va.: Re: Space between stopped cars.
I was taught to not block an intersection nor a business entrance on street. Could that be part of the perception of huge space gaps between parked cars. The rule that was taught in Fairfax County's "Behind the Wheel" training back in the 70s taught me was you can't block the flow of traffic.
Dr. Gridlock: It's the same principle. thanks.
Common courtesy?: Oh boy. We have red-light runners, people who speed up to prevent others from merging, people who block others from spaces in parking lots, people who yap nonstop on cell phones absolutely everywhere, including (I am not making this up) in a stall in the men's room; people who cut in line, etc., etc.
I think maybe "common courtesy" at this point is a quaint, outdated concept. Pretty sad.
Dr. Gridlock: It seems that way...
Reston, Va.: Re: Overweight folks and Southwest Airlines.
It's a little bit of a stretch to compare Metro to SWA regarding overweight individuals. Weight and balance and space limits are fairly critical to safe airline travel, while not so much for bus and train travel.
Dr. Gridlock: I have seen that issue on TV several times, and it seems like the major concern is the comfort of the adjacent passenger.
I believe the show is called "Airline" on cable TV.
Southwest NOT prejudiced against obese: Southwest charges extra if a heavy person needs two seats. So do most airlines, but Southwest has much cheaper rates. Airline passengers need to be belted in during takeoff and landing, so there are safety issues involved if one cannot fit in one seat. Metrorail doesn't have seat belts.
Dr. Gridlock: I did not see the safety concern on that show, although that may be the case. What about babies? Are they required to be belted?
Metro Obesity: Could I just suggest that "standards" for a public transportation system might be inclusive enough to allow any person to travel on its system for a fare; as opposed to a private airline which can set its own standards and price system as long as it doesn't unfairly discriminate?
And I don't like fat guys hogging both seats either but I expect different treatment than when I fly.
Dr. Gridlock: to charge an obese person for two seats--is that discrimination.
Re: Pittsburgh Left: Pittsburgh has it right. My question is about motorists, who have been waiting at a red light, hit the gas as soon as they get a green (not an arrow -- must yield to oncoming traffic), to beat oncoming traffic. I can see the value of The Pittsburgh Left if there are not turn lanes and everyone knows what is about to happen. I think in this area, however, it is dangerous to other motorists and pedestrians.
Dr. Gridlock: I agree with you.
Silver Spring, Md.: As a Metro rider I am less bothered by heavy riders than the much more common issue of people sitting in the aisle seat while the window seat is empty and by folks standing in the doorway (despite their heroic efforts to suck in their tummies).
THESE are the people that need to move their butts!
Dr. Gridlock: I suspect the aisle-sitters don't want to slide over to the windows because it will take them a nano-second longer to get to their exit...
Gaithersburg, Md.: I agree with Lisa Farbstein's comments about Metro riders, but I think the comparison to Southwest Airlines's policy is like apples to oranges. For an airplane flight, you purchase a SEAT and everyone must be seated. On a full flight, there is no option of changing seats or standing in the aisle. On Metro, you purchase a RIDE and are free to stand or move to another seat.
Dr. Gridlock: That's a good point. Thank you.
Washington, D.C.: Hi Dr. G -- My question is about metro rush hour fares. Rush hour fares are in effect until 9:30 a.m. Doesn't that mean that Metro should be providing rush hour service until 9:30? I often get to my metro station around 9:00 and find at least a 10-15 minute wait for the next train that I need. That seems a bit too long for rush hour. Metro seems to slow down the frequency of trains at 9:00. Why am I still paying rush hour fares? Thanks!
Dr. Gridlock: We've handled that before. The answer is that yes, you are charged rush hour fares when you don't receive rush hour service.
Metro has a convoluted explanation. Seems wrong to me, and I understand your frustration, but in the end, it's their system, and they do what they want.
Washington to Baltimore: Re-paving started on a 2.5 mile northbound stretch of the B/W Parkway two weeks ago. Last Monday, the pavement was thoroughly grooved. Not a darn thing has happened since -- any idea why construction would be at a standstill on such a major thoroughfare for more than a week?
Dr. Gridlock: I will ask, but it will help me if you could be more specific about the location. Such as, between what exit and what exit...Thanks.
Boston/D.C.: If you drive in Mass., you will see that (turning left as soon as light goes green) on a VERY regular basis.
Also, people there do indeed know how to yield at rotaries and let the drivers in the circle go by, seems like on Memorial Bridge this is marked backwards, since I nearly was hit there by following Boston-common sense rules of traffic ...
Dr. Gridlock: I would hate to see us copy anything about the Boston transportation system. It is the most difficult city I've tried to drive.
Example: In the suburb of Malden, there are no street signs to tell you what street you are on! There are street signs to tell you what the cross streets are, but to find out what street you are on, you have to make three right turns.
Barbara Jacobowitz, Silver Spring, Md.: I take Queens Chapel Rd. as part of my commute from D.C. to Silver Spring each afternoon. The timing of the lights at the intersection of Queens Chapel and Chillum Road is a huge problem. Chillum Road has more than enough time to completely clear all traffic, while Queens Chapel Rd. has huge backups. Is it possible to have someone check the timing and adjust it to allow more time for Queens Chapel? Thanks!
Dr. Gridlock: Call the MSHA public information office (410) 545 0303 and ask for the phone number for Woody Hood. He is the traffic signals guru for the state, and he probably knows whatever intersection you are referring to....
Re: Metro Seats and airlines: I think the difference between Metro and the airlines is that when you pay your metro fare you are not buying a "seat" you are buying transportation from one place to the next.
If I ride Metro and have to stand, does it cost any less? No. But I can't fly if there is no seat for me. Therefore, each seat that is used is paid for separately -- even Yo-Yo Ma pays for an extra seat for his cello. And if someone takes up two seats (for whatever reason) they may be charged for the extra seat (I believe that some airlines don't charge full fare in that case, but I'm not sure).
Metro however is basic transportation. You get on, you get off. You pay for the transit, not the seat.
Lap-babies do not pay for seats nor do they have to be buckled in until 2-yrs. old (I believe). Since they are not using a seat, there is no charge for them. However, airlines prefer that they be buckled if possible, and many will move a family if there are extra seats available on a flight to allow a car seat to be strapped in. To guarantee it, you have to buy the seat.
Maryland: I find it disgusting that people are so casual about their bigotry toward obese people. The fact of the matter is that most people who are obese suffer from such poor self-esteem that it is the reason they engage in self-destructive behaviors such as overeating. I would suggest that all of you take a look in the mirror, find something you don't like about yourself and thank your lucky stars that you don't have the need to hurt yourself in order to be able to live with it.
Dr. Gridlock: Although complaints about obese people riding next to a passenger may seem like bigotry, I'm not convinced that the complainers see themselves as bigots.
Maryland: 1. Babies on flights do not have to be belted (which I think is wrong). Children under 2 can be held by the parent. Personally I think all should require a seat and be belted.
2. It is not a form of ILLEGAL discrimination to charge more for an obese person -- your weight is not like race or religion, and it is not a protected class under the law.
Dr. Gridlock: Thanks for the distinction.
Washington, D.C.: Any idea who is responsible for the signs on 50 Westbound heading towards the Bay Bridge that read, "50 is Swiftest?" Is there another alternative to crossing the Bay Bridge that I should be aware of? One that's not as swift? If I were a Maryland resident I would be up in arms about that blatant waste of money.
Dr. Gridlock: I think it's like those "Reach The Beach" signs that went up several administrations ago, to let citizens know the state was concerned about making Route 50 improvements. And they did.
Most of my sign complaints are about signs that are missing. You might just let this one slide.
SWA versus Metro: Another consideration is, as Lisa pointed out, on Metro you can get up and move to another seat or stand if the person next to you is taking up part of your seat. On any airline, you only have the right to sit in the specific seat listed on your boarding pass and you are not allowed to stand during takeoff, landing or most of the flight, so your options are much more limited than those of a Metro rider. SWA is dealing with a different transportation issue for their passengers.
Dr. Gridlock: Yes, these are good points.
Alexandria, Va.: I don't know who is in charge of the Lincoln Circle project, or what they hope to get out of it, but it's taking too long and creating problems. Is it too much to ask for clear lane lines while the project is continuing?
Dr. Gridlock: You mean the Lincoln Memorial in the city. This is supposed to be done next year.
I have had trouble understanding how this $50 million project--which has interfered with traffic flow for two years--is ultimately going to create smoother traffic flow and safer pedestrian access.
Re: Bicyclists on Busy Roads: I make it a point never to bike on any roads where the speed limits are greater than 30 mph. Alas, even when I am going the speed limit or speeding, cars still pass me.
It may shock some of you, but most people cycling are actually going somewhere; they aren't out for a leisure ride (and during nice weather, the trails are all clogged with leisure riders). Just as drivers choose the most direct roads to their destinations so they can get there the fastest, so do cyclists. I agree that slamming on the brakes for a cyclist in a 45 mph zone sounds scary, but that depends on how fast the biker was going. If he or she was peddling hard and going in the thirties, then I would say that driver needs to be a lot more aware.
Often racing or touring cyclists are out on country roads were the speed limits are 55-60. No real problems there. Pay attention.
Arlington, Va.: Regarding Metro, "it's their system and they can do what they want"?!
Excuse me, but I thought Metro was PUBLIC transit. Which means that, at least theoretically, it belongs to the public. And those who run the system are at least supposed to be accountable to the public. Many are even elected officials.
Of course, most seem to care less about Metro. Seems odd for it to be "their" system when "they" don't ever get on a train or bus.
If we just say "oh well, Metro can do whatever it wants," we may as well pack it in and go home.
Dr. Gridlock: Metro is now forming a citizen's advisory board, and CEO Richard White is holding online forums with the public.
Call 202-962 1051 to find out when the next opportunity is to be heard. That's where to take the complaint about rush hour fares for non rush hour service.
Alexandria, Va.: Hey Dr. Lock --
Have the changes on the interchanges on the Virginia side of the Wilson Bridge helped at all? They have a new ramp from Rt 1 north to the bridge and new exit from 95 north to Rt. 1 south. That's the good news. The bad news is that the exit from 95 south to the Mt Vernon Parkway is closed. Any word when that's going to reopen?
Dr. Gridlock: Let's wait until the WW Bridge folks finish the two Virginia interchanges: Route 1 in 2009, and Telegraph Road in 2011.
For incremental ramp closings and openings, check the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Web site at www.wilsonbridge.com.
DC 20036: When I tried to use an old farecard worth $3.80 and it failed, the Metro kiosk attendant gave me a postpaid envelope in which to send the demagnetized card for replacement. About a week later, I received an envelope with four separate farecards, three for $1.00 each and one for $0.80. Why on earth did Metro not just send one card for $3.80?
Dr. Gridlock: Ask Metro at 202 637 1328.
Washington, D.C.: Mine is just a tiny complaint: The exit fare gates at Gallery Place have been out of ink lately, so I can't tell how much is left on my farecards.
Dr. Gridlock: Call Metro at 202 637 1328.
Annandale, Va.: Police are often out enforcing HOV on 66 inside the beltway. But I drive when HOV is not in effect, and I see at least one truck a day in this no-truck area. Not just pickups filled with landscaping tools but multi-axle commercial vehicles. Is the "no truck" rule enforced at all?
Dr. Gridlock: Not enough, apparently.
DC: To the person who parked at the broken meter... please contact the DC Inspector General and register your complaint. I have also been ticketed at a broken meter-- AFTER I called and reported it broken, and the ticket was not waived when I sent in the "confirmation number". It's absurd that the DC govt gives people a number to call to report broken meters, but then can decide to ticket them anyway if they deem the meter to be working (whether or not it was working at the moment it was reported). Please complain; maybe we'll one day achieve critical mass and the rule will be changed.
Office of the Inspector General
Didn't the D.C. DMV or Mayor Williams have a Web site where you can make suggestions (like repainting crosswalks, fixing potholes, etc.)?
Do you know what the site's address is?
Dr. Gridlock: Try 202 727 1000, and ask.
Bethesda, Md.: Who should I contact to discuss the terrible timing of traffic lights on Fernwood/Westlake Terrace in Bethesda, Md. (20817)? One light turns green when the next one turns red. There is no school nearby where kids would be walking where they need to slow the traffic. It is an inconvenience.
Dr. Gridlock: Try Thomas D. Pogue with Montgomery County Transportation at (240) 777-7150.
Carl Henn, Rockville, Montgomery, Md.: Oil is finite. America's production peaked in 1970. North Sea oil peaked in 2000. Saudi Arabia is pumping millions of gallons of sea water into their oil fields to keep up production. World oil discoveries peaked in the early 1960s. We have been burning more oil than we discover since 1980. Many oil experts predict that global oil production will peak before 2010.
Given this context, doesn't it make sense to stop building roads and sprawl and start investing in transit and walkable, bike- friendly communities?
Dr. Gridlock: Thanks for a lively chat today, folks. I try to get to every inquiry, but it's getting more difficult. Next time, I'll ask that posters stick to one subject, if possible. Thanks. See you in two weeks, 1-2 p.m.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Dr. Gridlock brings his expertise in all things traffic and transportation to washingtonpost.com.
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On "The Biggest Loser," the team trained by Michaels lost a collective total of 450 pounds in three months. One team member -- Ryan Benson, the number 1 winning loser -- lost 90 pounds on the show and went on to lose another 32 after he went home. In "Winning by Losing: Drop the Weight, Change Your Life" (Collins; September 1, 2005), Michaels shares the "3-S" approach to eating and exercise that worked for her team. Michaels is co-owner of Sky Sport and Spa, a penthouse fitness facility in Beverly Hills. Her clients include actors such as Amanda Peet and Mark Ruffalo. Among her credentials, she holds a Black Belt in Muay Thai. She lives in Los Angeles, California.
Manhattan, N.Y.: Are you ever concerned that someone might lose weight too quickly just to help the team on the television show? How do you monitor that people are losing weight properly?
Good question. I love this one because it allows me to dispel dieting myths which is one of my favorite things. I dedicate an entire chapter to explaining questions like this in my book.
We've all heard that saying, "losing 1-2 lbs a week is healthy". Not so... it's REALISTIC. That's the difference.
Losing weight quickly when done through exercise and not starvation is not dangerous at all. In fact there is no true scientific evidence to suggest otherwise. The only complication that could occur are gallstones, however if the person is taking in plenty of fiber, exercising, and staying hydrated the chance of a gallstone is next to none.
In fact, I think the evidence has shown quite the opposite. If you look at our contestants on the show they come in with all kinds of afflictions: type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, etc. When they leave the show they are in better shape then me and off of all their various medications.
Washington, D.C.: Hi Jillian. I noticed that a lot of the meal plan items promoted on the Biggest Loser site, as well as your advice on the show, seem to be in line with the South Beach diet. I haven't seen every episode of the Biggest Loser, but do you actually endorse this diet? Or do you think there are moderations to South Beach that could make it more effective? I'm considering trying it in the near future. Thanks!
Actually the stuff on the biggest loser site is generic. I did not actually write the plan on their site and I am not entirely sure who did.
Having said that, I actually do not believe in a one size fits all approach to diet / nutrition. Here is the deal, all these fad diets: South Beach, The Zone, Atkins, Pritikien etc. are nothing other then a reinvention of the macro-nutrient ratio. Macro-nutrients are FAT, CARBS, PROTEIN.
For example: Atkins is all protein and fat with no carbs. Pritiken is all carbs, no fat with some lean protein only. The Zone is equal portions of carbs protein and fat. All these diets are doing is reinventing the wheel to sell you something.
The truth is that you are as unique on the inside as you are on the outside. That is why some diets will work for some people and not others. In order to figure out what is the best macro-nutrient ratio for YOU you have to understand how your body processes what you eat. Their is a test on this in my book to help you identify what is the best macro-nutrient ratio for you.
One thing I can tell you definitively about these fad diets is that they don't tell you the truth. At the end of the day weight loss is math. It's all about watching your calorie intake and increasing your energy expenditure. ok your thinking, then why not eat garbage and just count calories. The reason I help people identify the ideal foods for them is so they will have more energy, better overall health, and better body composition which helps rev up their metabolism.
I could go on and on with this question alone, but since I have so many others to answer I better shut up. I encourage you to explore what I am saying further. I guarantee it will completely transform they way you approach your "diet" from now on.
Washington, D.C.: How much are the contestants really working out over the course of a week? It seems like a lot, but it is a week of activity boiled down into an hour-long show.
Gosh, you guys ask great questions. The contestants on my team are following the exercise regimen I outline in the SWEAT section of my book. My program consists of 4 hours of resistance training a week.
Here is the difference between what I advocate in "real life" and on the show... CARDIO and lots of it. In my book I advocate 4 hours of resistance training a week and then explain that cardio is extra credit. There is an entire chapter on the best way to do cardio, when, how, why etc. The more cardio you do on top of the exercise regimen I outline for you, the more rapidly you will lose weight.
On the show my team does 1 hour of cardio in the morning. Then in the afternoon we do an hour of resistance training as outlined in my book followed by another hour of cardio. Then one more hour of cardio in the evening.
The cardio is what I call gravy...by doing all that extra cardio I am increasing their energy output (burning lots of fat) but the way I structure their fitness regimen they are not over-training.
We do take Sunday completely off - no exercise whatsoever.
Chicago, Ill.: Thanks for taking my question: I exercise regularly, 4-5 mile run 6 days a week. My problem is I sweat profusely, in about 20 mts I am drenched in sweat. Is that normal or is it an indication of a health problem. Also, is running every day bad? Thanks
Jillian Michaels: Ok, everyone's body is different. It is not unhealthy in anyway if you sweat profusely when you run, it just means you body is slightly less efficient at cooling itself then someone who doesn't sweat much.
As for the running 6x a week my question is, how is your body holding up. I believe some people are physically built to be runners. I am not. My knees always hurt and so does my hip if I run every day. Do you have any pain at all? Shin splints, heel spurs, knee problems, (clicking etc.) do your hips or your lower back ache? If you can answer no to all these questions then I wouldn't worry about it at all. Just make sure you have really good running shoes.
If you do have any of the issues I mentioned above you might want to cut the running back to 4 times a week max and work in other forms of cardio instead like spinning, rowing, stairs etc. It's a good idea to get some variety into your exercise regimen regardless in order to keep your body from adapting to it's current program. Also - make sure and take that 7th day off. Your body needs adequate time to rest.
Col., Md.: Do you know how Mo is doing?
Jillian Michaels: Mo is a sweet heart. I try not to get involved in that situation because I don't want to step on Bob's toes. It is my understanding that Mo has lost around 70lbs total to date since BL1.
Arlington, Va.: How do you respond to criticism that the diet and exercise plan on the show are not healthy? Mixing intense exercise with a low calorie diet often can cause the body to eat as much muscle as fat. The other problem I see with the show is why should you have very overweight people run? The impact on their joints and potential for injuries would make that seem to be a bad idea. I imagine even a decent walk would get their heart rates into ideal ranges for cardio.
Jillian Michaels: What you are actually seeing on the show is not what is really happening. My boys are not on low calorie diets. They are all consuming between 1800 - 2500 cals per day depending on their unique metabolic requirements.
As for the running, they really aren't running until about three weeks into their stay at the ranch. If you pay attention you will see that they are always walking on the treadmill, while I train them individually. Often the sprints and stuff you see on the show is shot for promos. For example, on last weeks episode you see Matt and I racing. That was actually a promo they staged for T.V. Guide channel. I never imagined Matt would actually run it so seriously. On top of which, there was nothing really wrong with his leg. He got a really bad charlie horse and he was exercising again with his team that night. It's a t.v. show you need to remember that. Drama equals ratings. You will see Matt tomorrow night working out with his team per usual. Lastly, there are no real injuries on the boys team at all. Watch the duration of the show and you will see that.
Herndon, Va.: Jillian -- can you please give me some guidelines on how to best divide my workouts between cardio, weights and stretching. Also, can you please give me equivalent workouts for walking, running, and biking. eg if I run 30 min (3 miles) how long & far do I need to go on a walk or bike to get the same results.
Jillian Michaels: I do have a very specific exercise regimen, but it is just way to much to put in this post. Plus, I don't have any information about your level of fitness in order to outline a routine or target 85% of your MHR. All of the information you are asking in the SWEAT section of my book, plus this section will teach you how to apply my exercise methodologies to your body and current fitness level.
Here are a few golden rules that I can tell you...
1. Abandon the concept of "target heart rate". Work to 80-85% of your MHR whenever possible.
2. Always warm up for 5 minutes with light cardio, then do your resistance training, then stretch. Don't stretch before you are warmed up, you could actually injure yourself that way.
3. Do your resistance training in a very aerobic way - no resting in between sets.
4. Train each muscle twice a week and wait two days before you train that muscle again.
How much control do you have over the workouts on the show? Are you the one determining their exercise plans or do the producers influence how much pain you put them through?
Jillian Michaels: Bob and I develop every aspect of the contestants regimens. We design our teams diet and their exercise program. There is a doctor and a nutritionist that must approve our plan and monitor the contestants well being.
Fairfax, Va.: How would you advise someone with Type II Diabetes taking insulin to eat and exercise? The insulin promotes storage of fat, making it very difficult to lose weight.
Jillian Michaels: This is not true at all. I have had several contestants on the show who are plague with Type II diabetes and I treat them just like I treat my other contestants. Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome are caused by poor diet and lack of exercise.
By putting the contestants on an exercise regimen and getting them on a healthy diet with no refined sugars and processed grains I am able to reverse the progression of the diabetes. On the show the contestants struggling with Type II diabetes ultimately get completely off insulin and as you have seen drop tons of weight.
No excuses... you can reverse this disease if you educate yourself and do the work required.
Providence, R.I.: I'm an exercise fanatic who loves reality TV. When I first heard about "The Biggest Loser" I thought it would be exploitative, but I find the show to be very inspiring. I like the emphasis on helping people develop habits they can carry into life beyond the TV show. Are participants provided a workout and diet regime when they leave the show, or are they on their own.
Jillian Michaels: I am so glad you like the show and that it has inspired you!
When the contestants leave the show the hope is that Bob and I have given them the tools they need to continue a healthy lifestyle back in the real world. Having said that we are always in contact with them in case the get confused or lost, need advice, or just an ear to bend.
I love the show and it has inspired me to be healthy!!! As a woman, I have a reluctance to lift weights, not because of adding bulk, but mainly I think cardo is easier. I know this is laziness speaking, so do you have any words of advice that I can use to get motivated to do the strength?
Jillian Michaels: That whole woman bulking up by lifting thing is another myth. As women we don't really have enough testosterone for this to be a reality. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We should lift weights in order to help us build as much muscle as possible to rev up our metabolism and maintain bone density.
Cardio is good because it gets you moving, but it doesn't burn nearly as many calories while you are doing it or after you've done it as lifting weights does. My actual method for weight lifting is very aerobic in order to give you the best of both worlds. You will be toning your physique while keeping your heart rate up to shed as much fat as possible.
There are a few women with hormone imbalances that do have the ability to bulk up, but I promise you if this applied to you... you would know it. Their are many other signs that go along with testosterone imbalances in women and it is very few and far between.
So get to work lady ;-)
Heart Rate during Cardio: With cardio workouts, do you need to stay within a certain heart rate to get results? If you do, how do you know which heart rate is your target?
Jillian Michaels: With all your workouts you should push yourself. The whole target heart rate thing is actually another myth. I explain this in greater depth in my book if you want to explore this further. Here is the reality in a nutshell, the greater your intensity level during workouts the more calories you will burn. Weight loss is about calories in calories out.
I suggest working out at about 80-85% of your MHR. Here is the equation for you to figure out what that number is. First you must calculate your Maximum Heart Rate by subtracting your age from 220 if you are a woman or 226 if you are a man. Then figure out what 85% of that number is. That number should be the number of times your heart beats in a minute when exercising to get the best results.
I am female, 5'1", and weighs 110 lbs. My diet is pretty moderate in terms of meat and carbs, except for a chocolate bar or ice cream cone almost every day. I run on the treadmill about 5 miles a day, 5 days a week. I have been doing this for over a year now. I haven't lost any weight, and what else should I do to lose a "not so flat" ab? Any advice? Thanks.
110 for 5'1 is a really healthy weight. You are talking about toning, not losing. That is probably your first mistake. In order to change your body composition here is some advice:
1. Avoid sodium whenever possible. It will make you hold water and feel puffy.
2. Drink 80oz of water a day to flush out excess fluids you might be holding on to.
3. Cut all refined sugar and processed grains. Canned and frozen foods etc.
4. Mix up your exercise regimen. It sounds like you have fallen into an exercise rut. In order to incite change in your physique you have to constantly change your fitness routine.
Germantown, Md.: I have lose 57 lbs in the past 22 weeks through good nutrition (weighed and measured protein, good carbs, fruits, veggies and dairy etc) and exercise. I have another 30 lbs to my goal weight (150) I do 30 min circuit (Curves)6X per week and walk 20 min twice daily. On weekends I walk a bit longer -1.5 mi. Should I be doing more to continue my loss at this rate (2.6 lb/wk)?
Jillian Michaels: Wow you are doing great! Congrats. I would say this to you... if it ain't broke why fix it. Truthfully, I would only modify your regimen in the even that your weight loss plateaus.
If this is the case, up your calories by 10% for 5 days and take at least three days off exercise completely. Then when you go back to exercising increase your the intensity level and duration of your cardio.
Again, this is not necessary unless you hit a plateau.
Bethesda, Md.: I'm working with a nutritionist that only recommends 30 minutes of exercise 3-4 times a week. I was doing an hour 6 times a week and she told me not to do that much anymore. I am 150 lbs overweight - I would think the more exercise the better. What do you think? BTW - I love watching the guys running around with you on their back - GREAT idea!
Jillian Michaels: Your nutritionist is wrong. You are right. The only thing you need to be careful of is too much resistance training. When you do resistance training your body interprets that as stress, therefore you want to make sure that you only exercise each muscle group twice a week with two days of rest before you train that same muscle again.
As for cardio... you can do as much of this as you want as long as you don't do over two hours of intense cardio in any given session. If you do you run the risk of metabolizing muscle instead of fat.
Midland, Mich.: What are the best exercises to address a flabby chest on a man? I have had a large chest ever since I was a teenager and as I get older (40's), I am concerned it is getting even more flabby. I do not want to add any bulk to it, in fact I would like to get rid of it all together.
Jillian Michaels: All men have this issue when losing weight. Here is the key, you have to burn off the fat with proper nutrition and exercise. Then after you have lost some of the fat on top of the muscle you can build the muscle out to fill out the skin. Push ups, dumbbell press, and cable flyes are effective for this but after you have shed some of the fat.
Washington, D.C.: What diet plans out there do you consider to be the most sensible? (i.e. WW, Jenny Craig, South Beach, Atkins)?
Jillian Michaels: I sort of answered this, but I in the event you don't see the other answer I posted I will just address this question one more time because it is so significant.
There is no one size fits all approach to nutrition. Firstly, what all these diets don't tell you is that you have to count calories. I know it's tedious, but it's a fact. If you want real results then you have to do the work and figure out how many calories your body is burning in a day and eat less then that number. A pound is 3500 cals so you need to keep that in mind when setting a calorie allowance for yourself. Second, all those diets like Atkins and South Beach etc. are just different ratios of fat, carbs, and protein. We all have different requirements for those three macro-nutrients (fat, carbs, protein) based on how quickly our body metabolizes it's food. For example: Someone who metabolizes their food very quickly will do well on a low carb diet because fats and proteins break down at a slower pace then carbs. But, someone who metabolizes their food slowly will feel tired, grumpy, and lethargic on a low carb diet and have minimal results.
In my book I have an involved questionnaire to help you identify the types of foods that are ideal for you.
There are a few golden rules though:
1. Try to avoid bad carbs even if your body can tolerate a higher ratio of carbs. Bad carbs are processed grains and refined sugars. Complex or good carbs are whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruits, veggies, etc.
2. Avoid trans-fat (man made fat). You can identify on a food label as partially fractionated or hydrogenated oils.
3. You must count calories.
4. You must exercise to get weight off quickly and avoid dieting plateaus.
Downtown Washington, D.C.: I'd love to know what kind of exercise you do and how often, and what kind of diet you follow? Any favorite personal tips you can share?!
Jillian Michaels: I workout four times a week. I outline the details of this program in my book, but it breaks down as follows:
Mon: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Quads
Tues: Back, Biceps, Glutes, Hams, Abs
Thurs: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Quads (same muscle groups as mon but totally different exercises)
Fri:Back, Biceps, Glutes, Hams, Abs (same muscle groups as Tues but totally different exercises)
Keep in mind that I am maintaining my physique. If I wanted to lose weight I would add cardio in on wed and sat.
I have a burning question I am sure the ladies are wondering about. Is there anyway to get rid of cellulite? I am very fit and athletic -- 5'3, 115 pounds, but I still have a bit of that annoying cellulite on the lower buttocks and back of thighs.
Jillian Michaels: Ahh the cellulite question. If you ever find a solution will you tell me! Sadly, you can reduce the appearance of cellulite, but you can't completely get rid of it. This is done by losing weight and building up the muscles under the fat. Some good exercises for this are squats and lunges.
Even still, you must understand that you will never be able to completely get rid of it because cellulite is genetic and it has to do with your connective tissue that lies over adipose fat cells.
95% of women suffer from cellulite INCLUDING ME. Honestly, at some point we have to embrace our imperfections. They make us human. Who wants perfect? Perfect is boring!
Derwood, Md.: Can you explain or comment about what causes the participants on the show to vomit during the workouts? Is this normal/safe? I'm wondering in case this happens to me -- I've never been sick during a workout but I've felt like I could be, mostly from dehydration and/or not eating enough. And thanks for your other comments in the chat -- very informative!
Jillian Michaels: Usually people throw up when they are beginning an exercise regimen because they have an excess build up of lactic acid and they are also suffering from a detox. All the toxins are leaching from their muscles into their blood stream and making them feel poisoned.
It happens to almost everyone I have ever trained for the first time. You will notice that they stop throwing up after the first week.
Rockville, Md.: What are dieting "plateaus"? What causes them? Is there any one cause? Can you start out on a plateau? (background to the question - I started working out seriously in early May - an hour a day, 6 days a week, to the point of being dripping sweat. Once that was a habit, I cut down my calorie intake until it was around 1500 a day. I have been losing at a pace that can only be called trivial - 5 pounds in those 5 months. I have a naturally muscular frame, but I'm not putting on much muscle with purely aerobic exercise. Help!
Jillian Michaels: Ok - here is the problem. I have no idea how much weight you have to lose. That plays a big factor.
However, plateaus can be caused by several different things. You have to identify which reason applies to you and then institute the applicable solution.
1. Are your calories too low? Has your body adjusted it's metabolism to slow down because of a decrease in energy intake.
If so, increase your cals by 10% for five days and up your intensity at the gym.
2. Are you exercising to intensely and too often, with little or no rest for your muscle being trained.
If this is the case, take a week off from training and let your body rest and recover. Modify your exercise regimen for the future so that you are only training each body part twice a week with two days of rest in between.
3. Have you really not plateaued at all? Have you stopped tracking your calories? Could you be thinking your doing the wrong things when in essence your calories intake is too high and it's counter acting all the calories you are burning in the gym.
If you suspect this could be you, go back and look at your food intake for the last three days and add up your calories. Compare you calorie intake with the amount of cals you are burning based on your Active Metabolic Rate. Then make adjustments to your calorie intake accordingly.
Washington, D.C.: I know the folks on the show tend to eat a very low calorie diet and yet they exercise an excessive amount. Does this sort of behavior make them more prone to injury? I ask this as someone currently training for a marathon who finds that if after a long run I don't eat enough I take much longer to recover and feel very sluggish.
Jillian Michaels: I actually do not believe in severe calorie restriction. However, my contestants on the show are eating between 1800-2500 cals daily. (I set different calorie allowances for each contestant based on their individual caloric requirements).
Here is the difference between my boys and your friend running a marathon. My boys have between 120 and 200 pounds to lose. Fat is stored energy. They have a ton of stored energy they can use to fuel them through their workouts. your marathoner friend does not :-).
Falls Church, Va.: Hi Jillian,
I absolutely agree with your advice that it's all about counting calories and exercising. That's exactly how I lost 110 pounds in 16 months and got below my goal weight. No "diets." No pills. No miracles.
Have any of the contestants had plastic surgery to get rid of excess skin caused by their weight loss? Do you have any advice on this?
Jillian Michaels: Ok - ROCK AND ROLL on your huge weight loss!!! That is so awesome. I love to hear stuff like that!
The skin thing is a real problem. It all depends on your age and genetics as to whether or not it will bounce back. I firmly believe that as long as you have lost the weight via healthy nutrition and exercise then you have changed your habits and rectified the source of your weight issues.
That said, there is nothing you can do about extra skin except have a surgeon tuck it for you. It isn't an easy way out and I don't think there is any shame in it whatsoever. I say if the skin bothers you, definitely get a consultation with a plastic surgeon and see what they can do for you.
Arlington, Va.: What are you thoughts on fruit smoothies for breakfast to "get your furnace going"? I (male, 34) use milk, OJ, yogurt, a banana, and soy protein powder and it tastes great, gives me a boost, and is quick and easy. Should I be adding other ingredients or do something else altogether?
Jillian Michaels: NO WAY ON THE FRUIT SMOOTHIE. This falls under the category of bad carbs. It probably has between 300-500 calories, which is insane for a drink. There is no fiber in the smoothie so the sugar from the fruit is hitting your blood stream like a freight train. (that's bad). Also, as a man you should avoid soy. Soy releases estrogen, inhibits fat metabolism and muscle growth, and makes you hold water.
Eat fruit instead and organic yogurt. I also like the carb control light and fit yogurt from Danon. Only 60 calories per cup. It's awesome. As for milk, it has 13 grams of sugar per cup. Try to get sugar free milk at the market instead. This is where you really have to learn how to read your labels. Picking the right products can be critical for your success.
Arlington, Va.: I don't own a TV, but heard about the show a fair amount. However, all I got was that 2 teams were competing to lose the most weight. Can you explain it a little more? What is the length of time for the weightloss, do you train both teams, etc.? Thank you.
Yes, there are two teams. Bob Harper is my male counterpart. He trains one team of contestants and I train the other. This season the teams are women against men. Bob has the women and I am responsible for my boys!
The teams consist of 7 people and the show runs for 3 months. The part that I HATE about the show is that every week there is a weigh in and the team that loses the least amount of weight has to vote off a member. That being said, I work with the eliminated player even after they have left the show to make sure they stay on track and continue to get healthy and lose weight.
Ultimately, there is a live finale, which should be at the end of November where the three remaining finalists will come back for a final weigh in. One of them will be crowned the biggest loser and win $250,000.
Alexandria, Va.: What do you do when the sports you like -- horseback riding, swimming -- don't make you lose weight? I hate going to the gym and I can't run due to bad feet...
Jillian Michaels: Those sports are fun and all, but you are right, they are not the most effective for weight loss because they simply don't elevate your heart rate enough.
First, you don't have to run to lose weight. Plus, if you find the gym monotonous what about the following suggestions:
Can you get a workout buddy to keep you company? Can you take classes you think are fun like hip hop, spinning, kick boxing etc. This way it's social and fun instead of boring and routine.
What about getting outdoors and hiking or kayaking. Join a softball league or basketball league. They have these for adults and they are so much fun. Open you mind a bit, be creative, think outside the box.
Reston, Va.: What do you suggest to people who work 10+ hours a day. Is one hour of exercise a day enough? How can one accelerate weight loss when you just don't have the time to exercise more.
Jillian Michaels: First of all, one hour is great! Second, if you don't have the time to exercise you won't be able to accelerate weight loss and that is the cold hard truth. I know you probably don't want to hear that, but you are better off knowing that at the end of the day. Therefore, make as much time as you can to work out if you want to get the weight off quick.
The only other way of keeping things moving is by keeping your diet really perfect, which is hard to do. No processed foods or treats etc and keep very aware and rigid about your calorie intake. I don't actually like when people do this because I think it is unrealistic and leads to a back slide. I believe in incorporating unhealthy foods into a healthy lifestyle by practicing moderation. But, if you can't workout, that is the only way to maximize weight loss.
Virginia: How do you get people to stay motivated, when they use food as comfort?
Jillian Michaels: This is such a good question. The whole first section of my book is about understanding how your emotions and your behaviors affect your weight. It's called the SELF section because that is where the transformation must start. You must confront your emotions and modify your behaviors in order to regain control of your life. It's the only way to move forward.
In my book, I will help you identify the pros and cons of getting healthy. I will teach you how to identify when you are emotionally eating, confront your feelings and rectify them in the appropriate setting instead of anesthetizing yourself with food. Sometimes, life just sucks and this isn't possible in which case I will educate you about how to pamper yourself in ways that aren't food related. I will teach you how to eliminate sabotage in your relationships and build effective support systems. I will teach you how to control your environment in order to limit your exposure to temptation. I will teach you how to reverse all the negative things you say to yourself on a daily basis by making you develop anecdote statements and daily affirmations.
On this question alone I could go on and on. So many people can lose weight, but the key to keeping it off is doing the internal work so you can heal the cause of the problem. I encourage you to do some serious soul searching on this matter. If you choose not to get my book, get someone else's. Reach out to someone that can help you with the things I mentioned above. It is the key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Jillian Michaels: I would love to stay and talk FOREVER with you guys. I have had so much fun. Maybe I will get an opportunity to do this again in the near future. Sadly, right now I have to run. We have a rehearsal for the finale of the family version of Biggest Loser.
Thanks again for all your great questions! I love to see people reaching out for help and taking steps to educate themselves about their health. Have a killer day and I hope you like tomorrow nights episode!
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The Post's Travel Section Flight Crew will take your comments, questions, suspicions, warnings, gripes, sad tales and happy endings springing from the world of... the world. Of course, the Flight Crew will be happy to answer your travel questions -- but the best thing about this forum, we insist, is that it lets travelers exchange information with other travelers who've been there, done that or otherwise have insights, ideas and information to share. Different members of the Crew will rotate through the captain's chair every week, but the one constant is you, our valued passengers.
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Did you have travel plans to the Gulf coast? Check out our
Gary Lee: Two Corrections to the minutes from Gary:
1. Carol Sottili is here today.
2. Anne McDonough is the section researcher.
Gary Lee at the helm here. Aside from Steve Hendrix (in Texas reporting on Rita) and Carol Sottili (off today), we have a full crew. It includes: KC Summers, travel section editor, John Deiner, deputy editor, Cindy Loose, staff writer, Andrea Sachs, writer and copy editor, and Anne McDonough, copy editor. We're ready to catch all your travel queries. Aside from your questions, feel free to chime in with thoughts, tips, suggestions, addendums.
With the wreckage of Katrina and Rita to deal with, and other storms possibly in the offing, does anyone have any ideas about what we as travelers can do to assist?
Has anyone particpated in or does anyone know about good volunteer relief opportunities available to travelers? Anyone have any tips on some large or just everyday things that motivated travelers can do their part to help a part of the country in need.
The best tip, idea, or anecdote gets a capitivating coffee table book by John Annerino about the Grand Canyon.
Gary Lee: Carol Sottili is here!
Washington, DC: Hello, I have seen some poor references made in previous discussions about Miami airport. I am flying to Punta Cana in December and the only decent flights I could get go through Miami. Both ways I have about one and a half hours between flights. I have never traveled through Miami and I have never traveled out of the country. What exactly are the problems that people have with going through Miami and what are the best ways I can avoid them since I can't change the flights now? Thanks
Gary Lee: Other travelers have mentioned that 1) the security staff can be nonchalant 2) the airport is spread out and often requires very long walks between flights and 3) the gate agents are not always the most efficient.
Anyone with gripes to share about MIA?
New York, N.Y.: I hope you travel gurus can help me out here. I'm attending a conference in College Park, Md., and flying back to NYC on a Friday afternoon (ideally around 4:30 p.m.). If you had your choice would you take a cab to BWI or National at that time of day? Thanks!
John Deiner: 'Afternoon. Given my druthers (What are druthers, anyhow? And are they good for you?), I'd avoid driving to an airport at that time of day, particularly on a Friday. If you can, take a cab to a Metro station (maybe the Greenbelt station) and go to National that way. But given the choice between those two evils, I'd pick BWI, because the traffic may not be so bad then, and a smart cabbie may be able to jump off I-95 or the BW Parkway and go a back way.
It's up to you, New York, New York.
Passport: Read (quickly, so I might have missed it) the passport section: did you mention where in the city one can get passport photos made, (or, nowadays, can I take a picture, crop it and submit it)?
Anne McDonough: Coming up should be a link to a passport photo comparison we did last year that lists 5 places in downtown DC to get your photos taken. Ritz Camera, for one, has locations all over the place. You can't just take your own picture--the rules are pretty specific. And if you're getting an infant's photo taken, call ahead to see if the location can accommodate you; not all are set up to photograph infants.
washingtonpost.com: Passport Photos 101 (pdf file)
Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C.: How will the US Airways/America West merger effect the current US Airways/United codeshare agreement?
Also, will the new US Airways continue to offer service to European destinations? I found some of their best in-flight experiences to be on their trans-Atlantic flights. Thanks.
Carol Sottili: I don't believe there are any plans to end the US Airways/United code share arrangement. And the airline has not announced any plans to discontinue its Europe service.
Boston, Mass.: I am currently booked to fly home to DC for Thanksgiving on Independence Air. Since booking the flight, I've been hearing lost of ominous reports of the airline going under. I've also heard that if an airline goes out of business, thereby cancelling your flight, that another airline is obligated to give you a seat on one of their planes for $25. Is this true? If so, how do you go about claiming a seat an another airline. Just give them a call? I want to make sure I'm prepared...
Cindy Loose: Independence is talking bankruptcy, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll disappear, or disapper by Thanksgiving. Too hard to say for anyone right now. The airline has cut some of its costly coast to coast routes and is trying to make things work despite incredibly high jet fuel costs.
So, no crystal ball. But yes, there is a temporary law that was extended that requires other carriers to take you on a "seat available" basis. Over Thanksgiving, not many seats are available--there is the rub. But there are so many flights between Boston and New York that I'd think you'd find someone with a seat available, esp. if you're willing to fly into any of the three metro area airports.
At any rate, there isn't anything you can do about it now, or as long as Independence is still up and running.
Alexandria, Va.: Just a small addition to your listing of Greyhound stations in this area, both are very convenient for suburban Virginia:
Springfield, with some buses that bypass Washington headed north. At the same location as the Franconia/Springfield Metro and VRE stations.
6770 FRONTIER DR, Springfield, VA 22150
Woodbridge, at the same location as the Woodbridge VRE.
1040 EXPRESS WAY RD, Woodbridge, VA 22191
Also with regard to Amtrak service: There are full service suburban stations with ticket offices, etc. in Alexandria (which also has baggage checking), by the King Street Metro; in New Carrolton, adjoining the New Carrolton Metro; and at BWI Airport. Also there are more limited stops (few trains and/or single routes, no staffing) at Rockville, Mannassas, Woodbridge, and Springfield.
John Deiner: Thanks, Al, for the good info.
VBT bike tours?: has anyone here gone on one? I just got their 2006 catalogue in the mail and am soooooooo tempted. May, Tuscany, biking past castles and flower fields... wine and food and cute guys to boot.
Gary Lee: Is this the same company as Bike Vermont. If so, I had a great trip with them a couple of years back in Vermont. Very casual but at the same time, well organized.
Arlington, Va: I read about Independence reducing thier schedule. I have three trips scheduled with them over the next 3 months. Will they be there for me when I'm trying to get home after Christmas? Should I go ahead and buy tickets on other airlines?
Carol Sottili: As Cindy said in an earlier posting, other airlines will take passengers from any airline that goes bankrupt, but over the busy holiday periods, there may not be seats. We don't know whether Independence Air is going to go under, but it's a good idea to do homework now. Keep up on Fly I schedule changes and figure out which other airlines fly to where you're going.
Chicago, Ill: Just got back from a wonderful vacation to Italy. I could ramble for hours about how much we enjoyed it, but one thing which really got in our craw was our return to the States. The red tape and hassle was extraordinary! I've traveled internationally over a dozen times since September 11th, mostly to Europe, and none of the countries, even Turkey, have anything remotely resembling the forms, warnings, suspicions, lines, bureaucracy and general "go away" attitude that you get when you return here. And most of it's pointless window dressing. (Well, at least in O'Hare, LAX and JFK.) I mean in Switzerland, for example, I couldn't even get them to stamp my passport!
I'm wondering about long-term trends. Have you guys have started to see or hear about any noticeable dropoff in foreign visits to the US? Any big backlash? Are other countries picking up some former US-bound travelers, or do people still think it's worth the hassle? And any movement in the federal government to make our customs and immigration (sorry, "border protection" and "homeland security") a little more user-friendly? Thanks.
Cindy Loose: I've not had that experience--pretty smooth sailing. Just get in quick-moving line, hand in little card saying I didn't buy anything but a t-shirt, and get stamped. Just did an office poll and found similar experiences. Maybe we've just been lucky? Or--you don't mention--maybe you're not a U.S. citizen and so your experience is different from ours?
How about those in the audience who've returned through airports into the U.S.---big hassle, or no?
Washington, DC : Hello! Thanks for taking my question. I am heading to NYC for Columbus Day Weekend and am planning on taking a Chinatown bus. Question is, which one to take? I've taken Washington Deluxe in the past with no complaints, but it seems other lines have more pick up and drop off times. Do you or other readers have any suggestions? Thanks!
Andrea Sachs: The buses are mainly indistinguishable, though I have found Washington Deluxe and Vamoose a bit cleaner (plus I like to get dropped off by Madison Square Garden and picked up closer to the Post). But otherwise, you should decide according to schedules and pick up/drop off points. In addition, some buses show movies, others don't---but you never know till your are bus-bound if the video is working. Some also stop in Baltimore, which slows the drive. And on the way back, make sure you are on a bus that goes directly from NYC to DC and has no other pick-ups in the city; that adds so much more time to your trip you might as well just wait for the next bus. Also, buy round trip, for a cheaper fare.
Virginia: Just wanted to give you a source of booking group tours and cruises that I have used: www.affordabletours.com.
They are agents for many of the big companies such as Globus, Trafalger, etc., along with most cruise lines.
They offer good discounts and great service!
Thanks for all of the information in yesterday's Travel Section. I am saving the entire section to use when I next plan to travel.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the tip. Lots of folks, including me, might be able to use those sites.
Arlington, Va.: I saw that one of you went to Croatia recently. I've been twice, both times booking through a travel agent and paying about $900--the first time open-jaw. I've found searching the European low cost carriers confusing (and it seems only Croatian airlines and subsidiaries of Austrian fly into Croatia anyway, right?), plus you often lose travel time with little savings. Can you offer any insights on a cheaper way? Also, did you find any hidden gems or hit the highlights for your first trip?
KC Summers: You could do a *little* cheaper -- I paid about $800 to get to Zagreb earlier this month (consolidator fare, via Lufthansa) and then about $80 more to fly to Dubrovnik on Croatia Air. Like you, I was expecting to fly very cheaply once there on Euro budget carriers, but that doesn't seem to apply in Croatia. YOu could try ferrying over from Italy but then you lose time. Bottom line, Croatia's not that cheap or easy to get to -- but it's so worth it, don't you agree?
Hidden gems -- I really, really liked Zagreb. It's definitely an underrated European capital. Just a real nice vibe, not drab at all, and a great cafe society. The highlights of the country, for me, were Dubrovnik (of course); the gorgeous, laid-back little island of Korcula; and the amazing Diocletian's Palace in Split (another fun surprise). And September's a perfect time to go.
Ashburn, Va. : As I watch Independence Air continue to tread water, I have to wonder if I should book on another airline for a flight to Buffalo at the end of October. Does the flight crew have any feeling one way or another? I saw they are cutting flights to certain destinations from IAD.
Carol Sottili: If Buffalo is not on the chopping block right now, you should be OK for late October, but it's never a bad idea to have alternatives. Southwest goes to Buffalo from BWI, and tickets that are not used can be applied to other flights, as long as they are used within a year, so you could hedge your bets that way (plus it's only $44 each way).
Issues with MIA: My biggest gripe about connecting through MIA is the arrogance and rudeness that too many customs and security officials have towards travelers, especially non-Americans, upon return to the US. You can be thorough and efficient withough being nasty. But there's not too much you can do about it.
But you can review an airport map ahead of time and be sure you pay attention to flight listings and baggage kiosks in the air and as soon as you touch down. That should help since the security staff isn't always as helpful.
Gary Lee: Thanks for your warning. Anyone else have similar or very different experiences?
Portugal Help?: Hi -- am thinking about Portugal in mid to late January. Is that a good time to go? A good time for cheap fares and decent weather? Or am I totally off the mark here?
Gary Lee: I've been in Portugal in January and found the weather surprisingly sunny and warm. Also, airfares in January to there -- or almost anywhere in Europe -- tend to be lowest n January.
Bethesda, Md.: Looking over this weekend's list of specialty travel resources I was a little hurt to see seniors, families, gay, adventure, and pets but not couples. I assure you married people without kids and couples in general do vacation. We'd appreciate a listing of resources (say adults only resorts) for our group. Or are couples so overlooked by the travel industry that there are no resources available?
Anne McDonough: The intention was by no means to insinuate that married people without kids and couples in general don't vacation but I don't think that couples are overlooked by the travel industry: Look at how the single supplement is pretty much a given in all travel industries from booking a cruise to arranging for a hotel room. That's one of the main reasons that solo travelers were addressed as a group in this piece. Having said that, Superclubs, for one, lets you choose "adults-only" when using their vacation finder to search for the right resort. Are there any clickers with adult-only vacation tips?
Thanksgiving Flight Tips?: Any tips for getting the best price on a flight from DC to Orlando on/around Thanksgiving? Just did a quick Travelocity search, departing Thursday morning and coming back Sunday, and . . . OUCH!!!
Cindy Loose: Thanksgiving is the most traveled period of the whole year--bigger than Christmas, bigger than all the president's birthdays and Easter and Fourth of July combined.
I'm afraid there is no hidden secret, except traveling on Thanksgiving Day, or get off work early enough in the week to avoid the crowds. For example---Involved in a business that operates over weekends? Volunteer to work the weekend after Thanksgiving, so you can instead take off Tuesday and Wed. and maybe Monday too, and fly back home right after the pumpking pie on Thursday. Of course that isn't practical for most, but sorry, there is no simple way around the price gouging law of supply and demand.
Washington, DC: Does anyone have any recommendations for where to look for vacation packages to Rio de Janeiro? Looks like it's a lot cheaper to buy a package than to get air and hotel separately, and I want to make sure I'm getting a good deal with a reputable company. Also, is 10 days enough (or too much) to spend in the city, and are there nearby destinations worth checking out for a couple days during the trip? thanks!!
Carol Sottili: Try www.flysouthvacations.com or www.offpeaktraveler.com.
Re: Miami: About a month ago I changed planes in Miami to go to Jamaica. Because of the construction the walk was very long, about 20 minutes and I am a very fit person. There were some signs for elevators etc. but I am not sure what the alternatives are for someone who cannot walk. I woudl also recommend having a ligh, wheeled carry-on. If you have one (or two) heavy over the shoulder bags, your back will be out of alignment when you get to your gate. Also, the gates and directions are not always marked clearly. On the way back, we had 2 hours and I hardly made my flight, I ran the whole terminal, and they shut the door right after I got in. The immigration/customs was a mess, the luggage area was full of unclaimed large size suitcases all over the place so you had to jump over them to get yours, and once we picked our luggage nobody could direct us where to drop it. Plus we had to pass through security again. It was a nightmare!
Gary Lee: Sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for sharing.
Alexandria, Va.: Crotia sounds awesome and I'm starting to plan a visit to the Dalmation coast in May...but what's the best way to get there?
Would it make sense to fly somewhere close and then take a train and a ferry across from Italy so that trael time is actually part of the vacation? If that's too cumbersome, what's the best flight plan from DC?
KC Summers: Another Croatia fan! I chose to fly into Zagreb because I wanted to check out the capital, but yes, it's possible to ferry across the Adriatic from Italy, and bypass the interior. You can fly to Rome, take a train to Bari and then take the overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. Either way it's time-consuming, but I like your attitude about making that part of the journey -- which you can't really say about flying.
Problems with MIA: For the person flying through Miami to Punta Cana. The probblem with the airport in Miami is more on the way back into the country on the way out. When you are traveling to the DR you will not have to go through customs in Miami so 1.5 hours will be okay for changing flights. When you get back from teh DR you have to check in through customs with all of the rest of central and south america and most of the caribbean. There seems to be no order in customs and everyone goes in whatever line they choose. It is slow and if you have a tight layover you can often miss your flight back to DC. Nothing to do about it, and as long as yours is not the last flight of the day to DC you can just wait and take the next flight back. I think the staff in Miami is sued to people missing their connections.
Gary Lee: Good point, thanks
Gary Lee: CLICKSTERS ALERT: FOR THOSE WHO MISSED OUR CHAT INTRO, We asked whether anyone had any tips, experiences or thoughts on how to volunteer to help for hurricane relief. The best answer gets a coffee table book on the Grand Canyon...
For New York, NY in College Park: Wouldn't it be better to take a cab to the College Park station for going to National? Also, www.wmata.com has the times for the BWI shuttle from the Greenbelt station, which is way cheaper than a cab, if that's a consideration. Also, I've noticed that the BWI shuttle drivers have been avoiding the freeway lately, which has made the drive much faster.
John Deiner: DOH! Of course. That's a real cheap option. I sorta got the impression that money wasn't a problem for the clickster, which I can't relate to -- so your solution is a good one!
for College Park/NY: Why not take a cab to the Greenbelt metro (not far from College Park) and take the B30 bus directly to BWI? It only costs $3 and takes 30-40 minutes. Makes more sense than back-tracking to National.
John Deiner: And another vote for the bus. Thanks, guys, for keeping me on my toes.
Re. passports: I've heard that US passports are going to begin having RFID chips in them in the very near future (maybe this autumn?). I need to renew my passport in the next couple months but thought I'd wait until the new technology kicked in. Do you all know anything about the timeline?
Cindy Loose: The RFID chips won't be in passports until next year. Plus, be aware that some countries won't accept passports that are less than six months old. So get your renewal now, and if you're traveling out of the country soon after your old one expires, check to make sure it's not a place that doesn't like new passports at www.travel.state.gov, consular reports by country.
Miami Airport: Miami Intenational sees a lot of International tourists and seems totally unprepared for this. This causes quite a few problems. After we disembarked the plane. We got in one of many lines for US passport holders and were able to quickly procede to baggage claim. There were far fewer lines for non US passport holders. Their lines were very long. So the baggage claim area becomes backed up and this is where the break down occurs. Airport employees go to the carosels and throw bags off them into piles, they keep throwing until more bags can come down the shoot. These employees are not careful with the baggage or where they are throwing it. Truly, it is dangerous. There is no organization and what is left are mountains of luggage. People finally make it to the area and have to scale these baggage mountains searching for their things. It is truly astonishing and I imagine not the best fisrt impression of our country.
Gary Lee: This pretty much concurs with my experiences there. One thing I try to do to help is avoid checking any luggage...
I'm thinking about visiting Ireland at the end of October. I've read the great article in the Post archives waxing poetically about Ireland in the winter, but practically speaking, is it a good idea? I don't mind cold weather, but is it too dark and rainy to make it worth while? If so, what price should I be able to get for flights at that time of year?
KC Summers: I've had good luck in Ireland in mid-November -- only one rainy day, and the rest of the week bright, sunny and cool. Really, you just never know with fall weather, so best be prepared with layers (t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, sweaters) and a rainproof windbreaker. It does get dark early, but that won't matter when you're in a pub listening to great music and drinking hard apple cider! (Better than Guinness if you ask me.)
You should be able to find something for around $600 round trip. The word is that there will be fewer airfare bargains this fall and into the holiday seasons, so look for fly-drive packages on such sites as to-today or smartertravel.com. Amazing how much you can save with package deals.
VBT Bike Tour: I went on a VBT Bike Tour to Prince Edward Island two summers ago and had a great time. Also, I can recommend Backroads, with whom I had an outstanding chateau bike trip to France.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the tips.
Alexandria, Va: I am trying to find decent airfare to Rio in the early to mid December range (returning before Christmas). Do you have any guidance on finding the best deals? Do you recommend going through a consolidator? Any recommended consolidators? I've never gone that route before and am a little apprehensive about it. But I'd be more than happy to do it if it will save me some money. Thanks!
Carol Sottili: A consolidator may be able to help. Try www.moffits.com to find out who specializes in Rio - you'll probably then have to go to a travel agent to book. Most of the major consolidators, such as DF-W, Picasso, etc., will book Rio.
Burke, Va.: We're leaving on a Mexican cruise next week, and I'm looking for suggestions on things to do during our port stop in Mazatlan. The tours available through the cruise line sound pretty lame.
Gary Lee: We're not familiar with Matzatlan. Is anyone out there?
BR, LA: The best way you can help hurricane victims is to return to N.O. and the state when it is up and running. Tourist dollars will be desperately needed and welcomed.
Gary Lee: Yes, we agree. How are things looking down there?
In The Dog House, Washington, DC: The wife and I had to delay our honeymoon this past spring because of events out of my control, (work schedule). We will have a chance to take one this coming Dec./early Jan. but want to go someplace with some adventure, history and culture. Doesn't have to be warm but we don't want Lappland either. Any suggestions from the Crew or the Audience?
Andrea Sachs: I would suggest Australia (Outback and Great Barrier Reef for adventure, Sydney and Melbourne for culture); Argentina/Chile, with maybe a side trip to Patagonia; or Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.
Anyone want to add to my suggestions?
Silver Spring, Md.: I was wondering how much plane tickets actually increase closer to the date of the flight. Does it make a difference whether you book a flight three months or three weeks in advance? Sometimes it seems like prices fluctuate daily.
Carol Sottili: So many variables are at work. Pricing experts watch how the seats are filling. If flights between two destinations are selling well, prices won't drop. But if seats are going begging, they will. Prices do fluctuate daily based on sales (airlines will match other airlines' sales), load factors, etc. The trick is to know the range of prices that are typically offered in a particular market and to strike when the price is low.
Washington, DC: Love the chats. Here's a field report: I took a short (Thurs-Mon) vacation in Belize a couple of weeks ago and LOVED IT!!! Charming, relaxing, (seemingly) unadulterated fun for nature lovers and cutlure vultures alike. A friend and I stayed in Belize City and spent most of the time inland ... caving, cavorting in the waterfalls, visiting the zoo, seeing Mayan ruins (Altun Ha), touring the culturally and geographically diverse countryside. We also spent a day beaching it between Caye Caulker (just TOO slow for me) and Ambergris Caye. I'd definitely recommend staying in Belize City if you don't want to dedicate your entire trip to water adventure b/c the country has so much to offer. Its not a plush, uber-tourist area (like, say Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas) but I found it plenty comfortable and safe.
I STRONGLY recommend visiting in September because (1) its the slowest part of slow tourist season and we were the ONLY people at the caves, waterfalls, etc when we visited (AWESOME); and (2) its festival time in Belize. Belize has a mardi-gras-style Carnival on Sept 10 and another huge street party and celebration for Independence Day on Sept 21 so there is lots to see an experience from pop and traditional culture during that time. We ended up visiting between both big holidays but there we smaller street festivals (Mexian Day, reggae & calypso fest) going on each night we were there.
My next trip to Central America: experience Garifuna music, food, and people of southern Belize and Honduras.
KC Summers: Thanks for this enthusiastic ground-level report! I'm a big fan of Belize too, but gotta say I wouldn't base my trip in Belize City -- it had a bit of a scary vibe, I thought. Instead, I split my time between a town near the Guatemalan border and a resort on Ambergris. That way it wasn't all water-oriented. Wish I could've made it to Caulker -- I think that sloooow lifestyle sounds appealing!
Good point about visiting in September -- just about my favorite time of year to visit anywhere. No matter what month you go to any Caribbean destination, though, it's wise to check the cruise-ship port schedules. The days they unload their passengers can totally change the character of a place.
Burke, Va.: Another tip on passports. There are countries who will not permit you to enter with less than 6 months on your passport. I learned this from a Singapore Air agent who tried to deny me access to my flight to Australia for this very reason. Fortunately, I had done my homework with the consulate and knew that it only had to be good for the duration of my visa (3 months). After rechecking, the agent found that the 6-month rule didn't apply to Australia. But what a scare!
Andrea Sachs: Nice catch on your behalf--and a good lesson for the rest of you procrastinators.
Arlington, Va.: I will be in Taipei Taiwan on business in late October. What are the must-see and must-do experiences in the city? Are there any easy side trips from Tapiei that one could do over a weekend?
Cindy Loose: Oh, you lucky dear. I really like Taipei, and there are weekend trips.
In Taipei--it's not likely you'll miss the night markets--lots of fun. The national museum holds most of the treasures of China, since Chang Kai Shek brought most of them along when he and his folks fled. (Good thing, or they would have been smashed in the Cultural Revolution.) You must have dim sum in the Grand Hotel, and again at a hole in the wall called Din Tai Fong. (I'll post a story I did so you can see addresses.)Also, great temples.
The big challenge for your weekend will be to decide whether to go north to the spas with natural hot mineral water, or to Taroko Gorge. Hmmmm-I guess I'd go for the Gorge.
For Rio Traveler ...: Not sure what your specific travel interests are, but I feel any trip to Brazil should include a visit to Salvador da Bahia. Rio is great for the beaches, big touries sites (eg Christ statue) shopping, and beautiful people most associates with Brazil but Salvador is such a visually picturesque and culturally rich place. The flight from Rio to Salvador is a couple of hours but I'd definitely spend at least 2 or 3 days in Salvador if I were plannign a 10-day trip. Spend time walking the steep, cobblestone streets and the magnificent architecture of the old town, Pelhourino; shop a the mercado modelo and have a beer watching the sunset; see the Olodun festival if you're lucky enough to be there on a Tuesday. Bahia is the BEST of Brazil, in my book.
Re: RFID chip: Just wanted to throw in another point of view: Even though my passport isn't up for renewal for another 3 years, I'd prefer to get a new one BEFORE the new technology kicks in -- frankly, because it scares me - anyone with an RFID chip reader can glean information about me as I walk by them, or am in the general vicinity of them (abroad and locally). I greatly value my privacy and will definitely renew my passport before the new technology so as to assure my safety over the next 10 years.
Andrea Sachs: Definitely something to ponder. Thanks!
washingtonpost.com: And Now, Taiwan , (March 14, 2004)
Cindy Loose: For the Taiwan traveler
Columbia, Md.: I would like to purchase Chinese yuan before going to Shanghai. Are there reliable on-line foreign currency websites that I can order some from? My bank (Wachovia) says it can't get yuan.
Anne McDonough: We haven't used this service, but a reader wrote in a few months ago about a company called International Currency Express (888-278-6628, www.foreignmoney.com), which lists RMB as one of the currencies they handle. Anyone have a personal experiences with sites like this one?
Just a suggestion for chatters visiting what we blithely refer to as "third world" countries: leave the contents of your suitcase(s) with a charity for distribution to those needful. My substantially better half and I were part of a church mission trip to Cuba last month where we helped construct a new sanctuary, and it was suggested/expected that volunteers would return home with only the clothes on their backs (backsides, too, I suppose). It was, and is, the right thing to do.
Gary Lee: Sounds like a good idea. I remember taking the Trans Siberian to Moscow several years back. I give away clothes at every stop across Siberia and the Urals. By the time I got to Moscow, I gave away my suitcase.
Bethesda, Md.: Has anybody noticed their frequent flier miles not being posted? I normally don't look closely, but when I did yesterday, USAir had missed a whole return flight, and Delta missed portions of flights. I always make a point of checking it at the gate, but I don't for connecting flights. It is odd that I have this problem suddenly occuring with 2 different airlines. They ask for us to wait for 3 months for it to be posted, then if it doesn't, they ask for boarding passes. Who keeps them so long? Is this a new trick?
John Deiner: Hmmmmmmmmmm. Interesting problem there, Beth. I just checked around the Crew, and no one reports a lot of missed miles on their frequent-flier accounts. (I'm actually amazed at how quickly Southwest credits show up)But you bring up a most excellent point: Everyone should monitor those closely, and maybe it doesn't hurt to keep your boarding passes tucked away somewhere for a bit, like next to the paper shredder.
Anyone else out there with a similar problem?
Chicago, Ill.: Thanks for answering my question about customs and immigration. I am a US citizen, so no trouble there (though I used to be a green card holder back in the day so I've seen it from different angles). I'm just griping about the multiple added security layers only for US entry.
The lines yesterday at O'Hare, as they typically are, were vastly longer than at virtually any other airport I've been to outside the US. That includes the line to get out through customs, where you just handed over your form to somebody who couldn't have cared less. We're talking lines over a hundred yards long. And I've seen this before. The whole thing was ad hoc and chaotic. Throw in the 10 minute "don't do this don't do that" movie they show on the plane, plus the warning signs, plus the paperwork (and fingerprint stuff, etc.) for non-citizens/residents, it gets crazy. Departure terminals overseas now have special sections of the airport roped off for US-bound flights, with added security. Any unusual itinerary gets added questioning. (You ever try flying to one city but leaving for the US from another?) We had to show our passport at the gate -and- getting on the plane yesterday. And when you arrive if you use your cell phone, for example, they flip out, even past immigration waiting for luggage.
Maybe I'm just grumpy after 10+ hour flights home, but the differences this American has seen between arrival in foreign cities and arrival in the US is noticeable.
Cindy Loose: Funny you should mention the cell phone thing---my boss and I were just discussing that. The TSA insists that the signs ordering you not to use your cell phone means only that you shouldn't use them while talking to the immigration or customs guys, and they say officially it's not a legal notice. But at same time, people keep getting warned against cell phone use. Really stupid.
But, the overall experience might vary by airport, cause us citizen folks returning to D.C. aren't finding any great hassle.
More Flyi : As I notice Independence Air has been a popular topic today, I was one of those affected by today's announcement of canceling West Coast flights. I was able to get my money back, but got no recourse in the extra cost it is going to take to rebook a West Coast flight over Christmas. Just thought I would warn others who may be in the same boat. another interesting point- the company never called or emailed me to let me know my flight was canceled.
Carol Sottili: They should have at least called to cancel.
Chicago, Ill: Any thoughts from you or readers on visiting Toronto Thanksgiving week? We've never been, and my husband and I are looking for a relatively inexpensive getaway for a few days. I'm also thinking about cashing in miles for the trip -- while people say to save the miles for a big trip, those seats never seem available.
I wish I had a hurricane volunteer tip, as I would love to help too, but I think most places want cash. Maybe it's like volunteers at soup kitchens at Thanksgiving and Christmas: we all think more about helping at certain times of the year, but the need is ongoing. I'd bet there are lots of places locally to help, if you have time off and want to contribute.
Gary Lee: Thanks for your thoughts on relief.
As for Toronto at Thanksgiving, it sounds like a good idea to me if you don't mind brisk weather. There are LOTS of things to do indoors -- Excellent theater, great restaurants, a wide range of good musuems -- that you can easily fill your time.
Prague in November: My mom and I managed to find a sweet deal for a week in Prague in November. Are there any absolute must-sees? And how warmly should we pack?
Anne McDonough: I'd bring a sweater, a jacket you could wear over it and a wrap. And a hat, just in case. That way you've got plenty of layers, can wear them all together if neccessary or separately if you've got temperate weather. As for don't miss sites...the Vysehrad cemetery, Josefov, Charles Bridge, the hrad. I stayed in the Zizkov area, a working class neighborhood that was a nice change from the touristy parts yet within walking distance of the old town square are. Outside of the city, Terezin, Karlovy Vary and Kutna Hora are popular day trips.
Deep Valley, USA: It's not clear what volunteers can do for the hurricane areas on the ground there - maybe if you're a construction person or can start a day care site quickly. Otherwise you're taking up infrastructure that residents need more.
It makes more sense to volunteer here to help the displaced find work, shelter, etc.
Or to foster pets displaced by the 'cane - some haven't been reunited with their owners yet.
Gary Lee: We like the idea of fostering Pets and of doing what you can on the ground at home.
Pittsburgh, Pa.: Just a note: I was never one for purchasing travel insurance, but when I booked a 3-day Disney Cruise back in July, I decided to purchase their policy, thinking that, well, it will be hurricane season when we are planning to go (mid-Sept), so why not. Well, my 3-year old daughter fractured her arm the day before we were set to leave, requiring us to cancel the trip. Well, that travel insurance came in handy - just filled out some paperwork and we will get most of our money back. Well worth the cost. We are planning to re-book the trip for early next year, and be sure that I will spring for the insurance again!
Does anyone know how to obtain this type of insurance if you will be traveling abroad? (my husband and I will be going to London next summer for a week's vacation)
Cindy Loose: Glad it worked out for you---an yeh, there are families who lay out many thousands of dollars--maybe as much as their car is worth--and risk it all. It's natural to assume that is you have some terrible emergency, thecruise line will be sympathetic and say, "Hey, we've got your money already, so no problem, just go after your appendix heals." But the DONT act that way.
As to insuring your trip to London---there are a couple sites that are like online shopping malls for insurance, where dozens of policies are available at one place. The one that comes to mind is insuremytrip.com. Just read all the fine print, to make sure it covers what you think it covers.
I hate MIA: I have yet to figure a way to go from any flight to another without going back through security. (Which is probably a good thing, but a hassle). So I try to fly through Atlanta when I can.
And mapquest has 31 min to BWI and 34 min to National. Depends on the cabbie tho.
Gary Lee: It's possible to connect on most outgoing connecting flights without going back through security. But when you enter the country you will have to pass through customs, then go back through security.
Poolesville, Md.: I was looking forward to yesterday's Way To Go section, but was somewhat disappointed in the airports section
Most of the info provided, is available on the airports' web sites. What I really want to know:
Dulles - Why does it seem security checkpoints are always so crowded? At least twice, I have heard a security guard at the front of the line instructing the passengers to blame the airlines. Who is responsible for the lines? Do the airlines/airport authority/TSA care that the process seems unbearable, or is it written off to captive audience/post 9/11 realities?
BWI - living in upper Montgomery County, BWI is not a realistic option. (My own theory on why the Inter-county connector is finally being built is to keep I-270-corridor Marylanders from using National or Dulles.)
National - Covering the political restrictions (and exceptions) on flight distances. Do flights into National still have the thirty-minute-before-landing rule?
I guess I was hoping for more of a usability review, than "just the facts." Maybe this is a different story? Thanks!
KC Summers: Thanks for the feedback, Poolesville. The point of the special section was to offer practical advice that folks could clip and save for use when planning or taking a trip. Hence the nuts-and-bolts guides to the three DC-area airports. We tend to address changing security issues, new TSA decrees, etc., in our weekly Coming and Going column, so keep an eye out for timely updates in that space.
As to your specific questions:
1. Dulles security is not always a nightmare. It depends on when you go -- what day of the week, and time of day -- and what security changes are in effect at a given time. I had no problems with security two weeks ago and on a previous trip a few months ago. In any case, the airlines are not responsible for the security lines.
2. Re BWI, try living in Virginia if you think it's inconvenient! Anyway, my advice is to get over it. If you want to get the lowest fares and most convenient flights, be more open to using all three DC-area airports. (You may be onto something re the ICC, but that doesn't change the reality of it.)
3. No more 30-minute rule on National flights.
Washington DC: I am thinking of taking my family to NYC for Thanksgiving to see the parade, etc. Any good tips for watching the parade or where to eat?
Anne McDonough: I've seen 24 Thanksgiving Day parades standing at 72nd and Central Park West, across the street from the Dakota and from an apartment which Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman alledgedly used to own. I'm not vouching for it being the absolute best vantage point--some poeple like being around Macy's, others like to see the parade march west--but it's near the parade's start, so you get there early and get to see Santa by 10ish if I'm remembering correctly (he brings up the rear of the parade), which is nice when the weather's freezing and folks have Thanksgiving lunches/dinners to rush off to. As for eating, I'm throwing that one out to the clicksters. Folks?
Washington, D.C.: A few weeks ago the flight crew asked for suggestions on what the travel section might do to improve it's service to the reader base. Well here's an idea that popped up at a little social gathering this weekend. Given the sudden escalation of gas prices, the cost of our weekend getaways from town have become a lot more pricey.This prompted one person to muse that we may have to return to our grandparent'custom of double and triple dates. So what if the travel section created an e-mail address and asked reader's to respond with fun things they have done on getaways with other couples. You could then glean the most interesting or unusual and list them in a small column each Sunday
KC Summers: That's a nice idea! Got something to get us started?
Washington, D.C.: I'm toying with the idea of traveling to Iran--I'd primarily interested in archaeological sites of the Persian empire. Does anyone know of a reputable tour organization to travel with? I'm too chicken on go on my own. Thanks!
Cindy Loose: I haven't used them personally and would not vouch 100 percent for any particular firm, but travel-adventures.com is a well known company, and it seems from a quick look at their website that they still do Iran. But frankly, that surprises me. Have you checked out the consular info sheet at www.travel.state.gov?
Washington, DC: Two comments: first I was wondering how common it was for airlines to have delays because they don't have pilots? I ask because I was subjected to a two hour delay on Thursday night for this very reason (Southwest from BWI to Manchester, NH). The plane was there - but no pilots.
As for your question at the begining of the chat - one great way for people to help out victims of the hurricane and travel is to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build. Many schools have "Alternative Spring Break" programs that have been doing this for years, and now many are organizing similar trips for Columbus Day weekend. Church groups would be another way to organize something like this.
Carol Sottili: Crew problems happen. I don't know that there are stats out there that break it down, but the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.transtats.bts.gov) has some info. In July, for example, 7.11 percent of flights were delayed because of the air carrier, which would include crew problems.
Good tip on Habitat for Humanity.
RFID info: It isn't quite as bad as all that. At the level of signal for passport chips you have to be VERY close to get any signal, espcially through clothing, purse,wallet, etc.
So don't be too paranoid about it.
Andrea Sachs: Thanks for the input.
Deep Valley, USA: I need a fresh idea for our year-end vacation cum mileage run (so it has to be far away).
We love London but would like a change. Is there anyplace in Eastern Europe you would suggest that isn't too cold or too expensive or too shut down over the holidays?
Gary Lee: There are lots of places in the East that are not very expensive or shut down over the holidays.
For starters, check out Budapest, Krakow, and Bratislava.
Berlin is also a great bet.
But wherever you end up there, chances are pretty good that it's going to be cold...
We can give advice on all sorts of things but we can't change weather patterns...
Re: Hassles re-entering the U.S.: I travel internationally (for business) about once a month, returning mostly through Dulles. Although the lines are sometimes long, I've always found the Immigration & Customs process to be straightforward, and the agents to be pleasant.
Cindy Loose: Dulles is my usual exit point too. Aside from the stupid cell phone rule--one guard told me it was to deter terroists from using their cell phones to take photos of the entry point--it seems to be no more of a hassle than getting into any other country.
re: Honeymooners: I would also suggest Mexico and Turkey. If you are looking for a short-distance, quick getaway without breaking the bank, Mexico even Cancun. I was not aware how much adventure tourism there is, but I went to a great hidden adventure park where we snorkeled in the cenotes, did zip-line, and walked in corn maize, not to mention the waterparks, historical cities, and just laying on the beach. Isla Mujeres is very romantical, couple nights there woudl be great. I am also recommending Turkey because the flights would be cheap, temperatures mild, and because nothing shuts down for Christmas or New Year's you could extend your vacation to include those days. Istanbul has great culture and history, and you could go to the south or Capadoccia for more adventure.
Andrea Sachs: Great suggestions. Morocco might be another one to add to the list.
Long Island, NY: After the hurricanes, it seems like most people have forgotten that more than New Orleans was affected. There are towns accross that area of the south that have been flattened. Habitat for Humanity is building homes off-site and moving them to those who need them in the affected areas. One could volunteer to help at one of the sites (I know NYC is one), and gain some skills too!
A working vacation so to speak.
Gary Lee: Thanks for that very good tip.
Passport renewal: Can I renew and get a new one before the old one expires? I look almost nothing like I did when the pic was taken and would love to not have to go through the doubletake, scrutiny, etc. every time I use it.
Cindy Loose: Sure, you can get a new one whenever you want. Get a good photo and go for it.
McLean, Va: RE Miami--I wrote you back in January about the situation in Miami. After coming back to Miami on a flight from Belize, I was caught up in the most choatic re-entry scenes I have ever encoutered at a US port of entry. I promised myself that I would avoid Miami if at possible on any future international flight. I have found the facilities and people in San Juan to be much more hospitable.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the San Juan tip, a good alternative suggestion.
Washington, DC: I am not sure how much of a tip this is but lots of churches sponser trips around the globe to do mission work. The participants always pay their own way so this is not a way to see a country on the cheap and do a little volunteer work on the side. I am sure churches would love to have any help they can get on many of the trips. I know people who have built schools, maternity clinics and houses in Africa and the Carribbean. Talk to freinds and neighbors about their churches. I am sure there is a broad spectrum of proselytizing on these trip just as there is a broad spectrum of churches.
Gary Lee: That's an idea. But it seems that it would require something beyond volunteer work...
Stuttgart Germany: Hi! I have a chance to travel to Croatia and the Adriatic coast. I'm looking for guidebook/webpage recommendations that will help me plan my trip. I'm looking for info on everything: sights, hotels, restaurants, etc.
KC Summers: Lucky you. Of course, you HAVE checked out our free travel index, right? That should be your first step when doing trip research: Go to www.washingtonpost.com/travel and scroll down to Travel Archive, then click on International Destinations, then search alphabetically by country. There you'll find a nice piece from a couple of years ago on one couple's discovery of Croatia not long after the war ended. Note that our archives are FREE, not like the rest of the Post archives.
Good guidebooks on Croatia include Lonely Planet, Bradt and the Rough Guide, though prices are a little out of date. Rick Steves has a nice little section in Croatia in his Eastern Europe guidebook.
Thanks for taking my question re: JetBlue last week! Was just following up since you said you'd check into it. Also, good point about Southwest fighting JetBlue coming into BWI, but AirTran is already there. And, aren't the low-cost carriers going to eventually have to start competing head to head? I am just not a fan of Southwest, and would love to see them have to really compete on things other than price!
Cindy Loose: It's possible that officials aren't sharing some scoop with me, but a couple calls did not yield any infon about Jet Blue invading BWI territory.
But you are right--the so-called discount carriers are going to have to compete head to head more and more. They're now 25 % of hte domestic market, and I just saw a reference to a study saying they'll be half in ---sorry, I forget in how many years, but it wasn't a long, long time from now.
More on Belize: You suggested staying in one of the resorts in Amberguis Caye how about renting a house? We are thinking about taking a 1 week vacation during thanksgiving and due to some costs for some we were thinking about renting a house b/c it is cheaper.
KC Summers: Yeah, if you just stroll the beach on Ambergris you'll se lots villas for rent down there. Google "Belize villas" for tons of links.
Anyone got specific recommendations to share? (quickly)
Falls Church,Va.: My boyfriend and I will be meeting up in Savannah, GA to spend Columbus Day weekend together. (He's in middle-of-nowhere GA doing training for his job.) Our hotel is in the historic district. Any recommendations for a couple places not to miss from you guys or fellow chatters?
Gary Lee: Steve Hendrix, our staff specialist on Savannah is out this week.
Any other clicksters have Savannah tips?
PLEASE ANSWER!!!!!: We're leaving for our honeymoon next Monday, to Greece. We're doing Athen, Mykonos and Santorini. Two questions: Will we need an electrical converter to charge our camera, etc...? What is the best way to use money there? Convert all to drachma? Credit card? Use US dollars? Thanks so much!
Carol Sottili: No more drachmas. Greece went to euros back in 2002. Use your credit card for most things if you're staying in a tourist spot. If you're going to some out of the way rural place, you'll need euros. I'd exchange some here before you go at a currency exchange place such as Travelex or American Express, and I'd use ATM in Greece to get advances if you need more. And yes, Greece's electrical voltage is 220, so you'll need converter.
Re: getting foreign currency before you go: The person looking to get Chinese yuan before leaving the US could try American Express travel offices. There's one in downtown DC, and they got me Maltese currency (they had to special-order it, but it only took a few days). I forget what I looked for in the phone book -- "currency exchange" or something similar -- but I'm sure there are other options. I wanted something that I could go myself and pick up, as opposed to having it done by mail and worrying that the money would get lost.
Anne McDonough: Good idea. Also, TravelEx (202-371 9220, www.travelex.com) also carries Chinese kuai; call ahead to make sure the branch you go to carries enough of the currency you're looking for.
Washington, DC: Hi - I have an 8 hour layover in Mexico City on my way to and from Costa Rica over the holidays. I'll be there on Christmas Eve and on 5 January. Any tips for where to go (I'll be alone, 28yr old female) to spend the day? Not interested in fitting in a ton of things, just in someplace comfortable and accessible to spend the day. Any restaurants I could sit at to drink a margarita, eat some guacamole and read a book while I wait for my plane?
Gary Lee: One idea is to take a taxi to the new W hotel there and hang out in the lobby. There's a nice cafe and you can sit and read and then go back to the airport at the end of the day.
If you have a bit more ambition, you should go to the Museum of Anthropolgy. It's awesome!
cape town, SA: have you all seen the new live feed south african airways uses that shows the view from the tail of taxi-ing down the runway and in flight? very cool.
Carol Sottili: Haven't seem it, but it sounds almost as cool as those people in the JetBlue flight watching themselves on TV as they got ready to crash land. Luckily, all turned out well!
Toronto at Thanksgiving!: Please alert the past poster interested in Toronto in laste November that the weekend coincides with the Canadian Version of the Super Bowl! So there may be rowdy fans in the mix.
Gary Lee: Good idea, thanks.
Re. China currency: I believe the only place you can buy RMB other than inside China is in Hong Kong. I'm pretty sure that it's a 'closed currency' that you have to buy and sell while you are there.
Anne McDonough: You may be right, officically, but I just called TravelEx and they said they had RMB on hand.
Florida: I have the week between Christmas and New Year's off, so I'm looking for some suggestions on how to spend my vacation. I'm single and will be traveling alone but not interested in the singles scene or nightlife. Interests are art, history and architecture. No beaches (I have those already). Any travel ideas?
Cindy Loose: You need to narrow your search. Start with: how warm do you need it to be? If short sleeves or sweater weather is an answer, that pretty well cuts out Europe. If you have a coat and don't mind wearing it, all of Europe is a possibility. How about Greece--fly into Athens then drive into Corinth and beyond.
If you need warm and can afford it a long flight, how about Buenos Aires--lots of art, history and architecture there, and the dollar goes a long way once you arrive.
RE Taipei, Taiwan: I'm from there. You could hit the beach - there are some uncanny limestone (I believe) formations - a famous one is the queen's head (sort of reminds you of Nefertiti) - but check w/ the hotel - those things are somewhat fragile to env. forces so they may not exist anymore. To the east of the island, Hua-Lien is gorgeous (not sure if same as the gorges mentioned - my apologies for not knowing their "English" names).
Fun/food-wise: night markets are a definite do. They tend to be easier to come by in "less" urban areas. Great for food and walking around at night. I think the tallest building, 101, should be open for visitors. You can probably see it from quite far away - great for pictures. Structurally it's very neat. Good shopping there, too.
And the Hyatt (the one near the "founding father's memorial") in Taipei has 8 or more great restaurants in it. Try the Shanghai cuisine or the lunchtime buffet. Both excellent (and I'm extremely hard-to-impress when it comes to Chinese food). Buffet in Taipei is an exquisite affair (nothing like "Chinese" buffet restaurants here).
Cindy Loose: Thanks. Normally I'd never recommend or even try a restaurant in a hotel, but sometimes I dream of the dim sum at the Grand.
Silver Spring, Md.: My husband and I are hoping to go camping in Shenandoah NP this weekend, arriving there Saturday morning. There are no sites available this weekend at the campground that takes reservations, but I was wondering if you or the chatters know if there are likely to be sites at any of the first-come, first-served campgrounds. Would the nearby national forests be a better choice? Thanks for your help!
Also, I'm sure you've answered this before, but is there an archive of the Weekend Getaways anywhere?
KC Summers: I wish we knew the answer to this, but our resident camping nut, Steve Hendrix, is off doing hurricane duty. I'm guessing that GW National Forest is a much less-crowded option then Shenandoah NP, but that's just a guess. Can anyone help in two mins??
And yes there is an Escapes archive online, under Mid-Atlantic on the travel home page (directly under Travel Archive). Again, it's free. Also see yesterday's special section, Pages 2 and 3, for a vetted list of great Escapes, by topic. Some good outdoors stuff in there, and lots moe.
Gary Lee: Thanks for all your questions. Thanks, too, to those who offered ideas about how to volunteer to those in need of relief.
We liked tip from the clickster in Woodbridge who suggested leaving eveything we take except the clothes on our backs.
If you send me your address to leeg@washpost.com, I'll make sure you get the book.
See you all next week!
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Appraiser Rudy Franchi was online Monday, Sept. 26, at 11 a.m. ET to answer your questions about the special edition of "Antiques Roadshow: Tomorrow's Antiques" that celebrates three memorable decades: the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
The episode, which airs on PBS on Monday, Sept. 26, at 8 p.m. ET (check TV Schedule), features such oldies but goodies as a 1955 Dodgers World Series baseball that could hit $4,000 to $6,000; a portfolio of Ansel Adams' photographs that could see $30,000 to $50,000; a paper Campbell's Soup dress valued at a hearty $1,500; and a costume worn by Elvis Presley, appraised to the tune of $15,000 to $100,000.
Born and raised in New York, Franchi has been involved in the movie business since he was 16 years old. He ran a film society while in college at Fordham and then went into New York exhibition as program director of the Bleecker Street Cinema during the early 1960s. He was a film critic for New York Magazine, Variety and Show Magazine when he started his own publication, NY Film Bulletin, credited with introducing the Aauteur Theory of film criticism (via France's New Wave) to the United States. He went on to become director of New York newspaper publicity at 20th Century Fox and in 1969 started the Nostalgia Factory with his wife, Barbara.
Washington, D.C.: I'm sure you'll get several questions similar to mine, but I have to ask anyway: Of all the items brought to an Antiques Roadshow event, how many would you say are the kind of valuable antiques that end up being featured on-air? In other words, what percentage of the overall items at an event end up on-air?
Also, what advice would you give to someone looking to develop a keener eye for valuable antiques? I go to flea markets and yard sales and antique stores, but everything looks the same to me. What resources would you suggest looking into to refine my ability to spot valuable pieces?
Rudy Franchi: The numbers are a bit daunting. An average Roadshow draws close to 6,000 visitors, each with 2 items to be appraised (some sneak in a few more and some have vast collections of such items as postcards.) Of those 12,000 + items, only 53 are chosen to be taped with a full appraisal. This is not to say that some other interesting items came in also. In many cases, we have recently done a similar item or there is some technical reason (the main one being the person bringing the item is not its owner....often it belongs to a friend.) Each appraiser decides which item would be of interest and presents it to a producer who makes the final decision. On a typical taping day, I will present about 3 or 4 items I think worthy of taping and if I am having a good day, will be selected to tape 1 of these. There are 70 appraisers on duty and only 53 spots and while the odds are better than on The Titantic, some appraisers are not going to make it on air that show, even though they have found items they think worthwhile. As for developing a keener eye: keep looking until something strikes you. It is dangerous to make a calculated choice of what to collect. It has to be something that attracts and interests you. True collectors are beyond fascinated with what they collect, they are obsessed.
Kaneohe, Hi: I recently purchased a framed sketch, done on newsprint with a black felt tip pen. I recognized Yoko Onos signature and above hers, John Lennon May l969. The inscription says "We the undersignees hereby name this room ole peace bag." A male and female head are sketched. I'm guessing, this sketch was done in Montreal during their bed in for peace. Do you have any information or idea what the sketch is worth?
Rudy Franchi: Sounds like it is part of the Bag One series and indeed they were don in Montreal. I would suggest contacting one of the larger auction houses since this is the type of item that does very well in major Beatle sales.
Vienna, Va.: I was fortunate to go to Antiques Roadshow in Providence with my sister, where by far, we had the most fun by far meeting you and all of your cohorts at the Toy Table (I had an autographed Rubik Cube).
We couldn't help but notice that even with our late entry tickets, there seemed to be a competition, especially among newer appraisers, to identify more valuable antiques that could "score" air time. We wondered why that didn't seem to be true at your table? It was quite delightful--you are all just as delightful and amusing as you appear on TV!
Rudy Franchi: Well, I wasn't at the toy table. Collectibles ( the table next to it ) is my field. They are usually a very relaxed group at toys since they have a fairly good idea of the type of items they will see show in, show out. At collectibles, we know we will get certain items we have seen before, but since we are a sort of catch-all category for those giving out the appraiser designations up front, there are some very strange items that show up. We have to keep our energy levels up since we never know when some great treasure will come through. At our last show of the current season, Los Angeles, a woman came in with an actual Oscar and tons of Academy Award emphera from her father who had been associated with the Academy. We caught the last taping spot available.
Philadelphia, Pa.: I have come across a 1955 RCA television with cabinet the model is 17T172, it is in excellent condition.
I would like to know the worth of this piece?
Rudy Franchi: Mid50s is getting a bit late for valuable Tvs. Late 40 through early 50s are the golden age. In good condition, your set should fetch about #300 to $400.
Maryland: Is there anything made today that's even worth collecting, what with cheaply made, mostly imported trinkets?
Rudy Franchi: There are many things being made today that are worth collecting, but I have no idea what they are. I've been at this for 37 years and 20 years ago I should have been putting away Pez Dispensers. 30 years ago I could have accumulated a fortune in lunchboxes for a penny on the dollar of current value. I could also have saved many other things that are totally valueless today. Trying to predict what to collect is what the British call a mug's game.
Wheaton, Md.: I remember a show where you found some movie posters that were used as wall boards. I was surprised that they didn't do terribly well at auction.
Rudy Franchi: Problem is, they weren't true movie posters. They were examples of lobby art: paintings done by a local craftsman to decorate the interior of a movie theatre's entrance. Movie poster collectors are purists and are interested only in studio issued, theatrical release film paper. They might collect a bit of the ancillary material, but they will not pay top dollar for it.
Lima, Ohio: Would like to know if the Road Show will be in this area, and if so when? Lima is about half way between Dayton and Toledo. Thank you
Rudy Franchi: The appraisers on the show don't find out the schedule until it is published, usually in April. We are sent a sheet with the dates of the shows and asked which ones we which to participate in. We do a lot of shows in the mid-west, so chances are there will be one within driving distance of your area. We do have people who drive huge distances to come to show and some even fly across the country.
San Francisco, Calif.: In the 1960's, I purchased a Peter Max Silk Scarf. Size: 26x26 inches. It depicts the Astrological Signs with a multi vibrant psychedelic color scheme. In very good condition. What would the scarf be worth today?
Rudy Franchi: Now here's an example of pop junk that has become valuable. Why did you buy only one? You could have found the wholesale and bought a gross. But of course, like myself, it never occurred to you that these would have any value. Well the scarf is now worth about $200.00.
Louisville, Ky.: Out of 12,000 items, obviously, some are going to be junk. How hard is it to tell someone that grandma's antique heirloom is just a worthless knicknack?
Rudy Franchi: You develop a set of responses to what you see. Actually, most people know that something is worthless and are not really upset when you tell them it has only sentimental value. Many people really aren't interested in the value of item. They are more curious about its age and its origins.
Klamath falls, Ore.: I have a 1935 price list of chassis parts august 15 1936-37 lincoln-zephyer in very good condition. Also have ford service bulletin mechanical vol. 18 august 1937 book. Do you think they might be worth something?? or can I just throw them away?
Rudy Franchi: This kind of automotive ephemera is quite popular, but not tremendously valuable. It could be sold at an on-line auction, but these items would fetch under $15 each.
LA: Can you tell me how much an unopened copy of the comic book of The Death of Superman would be worth?
Rudy Franchi: Comic book values are determined by a book called Overstreet's. They set the values and it is quite like referring to stock tables in your daily newspapers. I would consult an Overstreets at your local library. Condition is the major factor to watch out for.
Fairfax, Va.: The Roadshow has appointment TV in our house for years, but we are also quite addicted to the UK (original) version of Cash in the Attic. It is fascinating to see the reactions to the things that they have used so casually (and are major finds with corresponding values) or the other side, things that they think are treasures, but are fakes.
What has been most favorite item that you have appraised? Where you almost jumped out of your skin the minute that you saw it?
Rudy Franchi: There's now a U.S. version of Cash In The Attic, hosted by Tim Luke who was a long time appraiser on the U.S. Roadshow. I guess the piece I got most excited about was the menu from The Titanic. It was on the back of a rather bad painting of the ship and as a long time Titanic collector I recognized it as an original (of an item that had been often reproduced.) I estimated its worth at $70,000 to $100,000 and it sold at auction for $75,000.
Anonymous: What should I do with my records from the 60s and 70s, hold or sell?
Rudy Franchi: Almost all records from this period have very little value, but like old books, they should not be tossed without seeing what you have. There are several good price guides to old records and it might be worthwhile to go over the collection with once of these at hand.
Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C.: My wife and I always wonder if any of the dealers make offers to people at the road show to purchase items. Or is this sort of exchange prohibited?
Rudy Franchi: We are strictly forbidden to make any offers for items we see. We are allowed to keep our business cards at a desk next to the exit from the show. If we are contacted, we cannot see anyone in the city where the show was taped and cannot talk business with them until after we leave that city. Any infraction of these rules leads to dismissal from the show.
Silver Spring, Md.: Love the show. I have a set of Looney Tunes glasses from Burger King in the early 70s. Should I have bought more or do I just enjoy drinking from Petunia Pig?
Rudy Franchi: Glasses from the major fast food chains were produced in the millions and for some reason seem to be indestructible since so many of them show up. They have not moved in value over the years (a few dollars apiece) except for complete sets, which are worth about double.
Maryland: How much time do you spend perusing that giant online auction site for valuables?
Rudy Franchi: I have certain key words listed and every time one of them is used in a title or description, I receive an email. Anyone can sign up for this service and it is quite useful. The keywords are related to areas I collect (London Transport Posters, ephemera about 60s psychedelic posters) and not material I deal in.
Washington, D.C.: My grandfather passed down his coin collection to my brothers and me. How do we go about finding a reputable appraiser for these coins? We truly have no idea what they are worth. They are all U.S. coins if that makes a difference.
Rudy Franchi: Roadshow doesn't evaluate coins or stamps. I suggest you contact Heritage Galleries in Dallas. They are major coin dealers. I represent Heritage on Roadshow since they have an active collectibles department with major movie posters sales
Maryland: Now that vinyl records are mostly obsolete, can CDs become collectible even if they may not be as archival as records?
Rudy Franchi: Again, I wouldn't try and second guess the collectibles market. A technology might well develop that makes CDs obsolete. Collectors love things that are obsolete.
Dunn Loring, Va.: Hi there -- I am often curious to know how much items featured on the Roadshow later sell for at auction (it's pretty easy to tell who will sell and who would be horrified at the very suggestion!). Is there any online resource that tracks this information? I'm especially curious, of course, about that famous blue-and-white striped blanket (with the shaky Kit Carson provenance) that appeared a few years ago!
Rudy Franchi: The new spin-off show Roadshow FYI does a lot of follow ups on items that have gone on to be sold. If you are curious about a particular item, I suggest you contact the appraiser who valued it. They usually know what happened. All the appraisers are listed, with their contact information, at the Antiques Roadshow Web site.
Hereford, Tex.: I have a picture of JFK and Jackie when they were married. My aunt bought it about 35 years ago. I found it after she died. She also has one of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King about the same time. Is it worth anything? It was one of those picture that came in metal frame with a light in it. Is this worth anything? The picture are all in the metal frames with the light in them. They are about 16" long by 12"wide.
Rudy Franchi: This type of memorabiia was sold in great quantities and has little value now. It is hard to imagine it acquiring much value in the future.
Ashburn, Va.: I inherited a collectible Princess Diana doll; scaled to size, in her wedding gown. I have been looking to have it professionally cleaned as there is a spot on her dress as well as inquire on proper storage. Under what professional category would I look to find such services and information.
As of now, it is being displayed on a bookcase (open to dust, but way from any direct light source).
Rudy Franchi: Look for a doll hospital. They are usually listed in the phone book or try online.
Maryland : Does your wife complain about filling the house with collectibles or does she share your enthusiasm? Does your collection fill every room?
Rudy Franchi: My wife is more of a collector than I am. It is the only way we have survived. Most collectors (and most of them are male) have to make elaborate deals with their spouses about adding to their collection. "Let me buy this Green Marvel #10 and you can have that whatever you always wanted" type of bargains. Seldom, as with Barbara and myself, you find a couple who are both avid colledtors. We both share an enthusiasim for London Underground Posters from the 20s and 30s and because we both focus with some ferocity on acquiring them, we have a collection that, we've been told, might be the best in private hands.
Madison, Wis.: I have a poster question for you:
Do you have any suggestions on places (on-line, or catalogs or especially well-known stores) to find 60s-era posters for events like the Olympics, Grand Prix races, etc.? I love the design sensibilities from this decade and would love to get one for one of my boys. My keyword searches on the internet haven't turned up much.
Rudy Franchi: Try Swann Galleries, New York and Christie's London (South Ken). They both have regular auctions that feature this material.
Washington, D.C.: Does being a famous face on the Roadshow help your own business?
Rudy Franchi: Roadshow appraisers are the like the Hawaian missionaries: we went to do good and we did very well. All those associated with Roadshow have had their careers and businesses boosted by appearing on TV. Barbara and I received a lucrative book contract and wrote Miller's Movie Collectibles. I also do public speaking and I have been hired to do appraisals of several major private and public collections. Now if I could only find a way to sell the 150+ cartoon character ties I've accumulated over the years.
Ashburn, Va.: I have a doll given to me by my great grandmother. I've been trying to determine the name of this doll, any suggestions. I've done several internet searches without success.
Rudy Franchi: We don't do dolls at the colletibles table. Contact Roadshow appraiser Richard Wright.
Kensington, Md.: I recently donated an Ed Wormley Drexel Precedent collection dining room table and chairs, china cabinet and buffet. (Bought it on E-Bay but it was too big for our dining room!) The chairs had their original upholstery and I'd say, with the exception of one out of six chairs, were in excellent condition.
What would the approximate value of this set be? I'm trying to figure out how to value it for tax purposes. Also, do you know of good sources for the value of mid-century modern furniture? I have several other pieces I need to research. Thanks!
Rudy Franchi: Furniture is not my area of expertise. If you go to the Roadshow website, the cross reference appraisers by category. I'm sure one of them can help you. As for modern design: it is an area experienceing a boom, but there is a paucity of expertise. The major auction houses each have experts you might wish to consult.
Tallahassee, Fla.: Thanks for taking my question. Being from Florida, I've collected a lot of 2000 election items. Do you see these thing being collectable in the future or is it an era people would like to forget!
Rudy Franchi: They are certainly collectible, but as with all recent material, will take several decades to increase in value.
Wheaton, Md.: Do those of us with huge mounds of old Life magazines or Nat'l Geographics have any hope for wealth?
Rudy Franchi: Before on line auctions, Life magazines had some value, but little did we know that there were milliions of them out there. They have plummeted in value because of the immense amount dumped on the market. Nationa Geographics never had much value since so many people kept them. The very ealry issues (c1910) are more collectible.
Washington, D.C.: What do you think of the Franklin Mint type "collectibles" that are specifically sold as collectibles? Do items like that ever appreciate?
Rudy Franchi: Very seldom. A limited edition collectible is usually only limited by the number of people who want to buy it. We see a lot of Franklin mint stuff and have to let people down gently as to its value. Back in the 80s when gold and silver was booming, some of the FM materail sold at a premium because they were made from precious metals.
Washington, D.C.: Are baby boomers more nostagic than anyone else?
Rudy Franchi: Each generation is nostalgic about its past. Baby Boomers seem to be the victim of nostalgic merchandising ... inundated with phony diners, phony juke boxes and other faux artifacts from the 50s.
Washington, D.C.: Do all the appraisers get along with each other?
Rudy Franchi: Mostly. It's interesting to see the appraisers from the major auction houses at the show. During the week these people are at each others' throats trying to get top consignment and come Saturday we are told by the producers to get along with each other. Well we do and we work very closely consulting with each other on values and the background of items. The competition to get on air is very stiff, but I've never run into a situation where information was witheld to stifle this competition. Actually, at most tables, there is agreement among the appraisers that every attempt should be made through cooperation for all of them get on air during a show.
Alexandria, Va.: I have looked for years for a poster of the S.S. France, a ship I voyaged on twice in 1970 and 1971, but have never found one. Do you know if one exists?
Rudy Franchi: There are several excellent posters of the S.S. France. I had one (by Bob Peak) in a an auction of Vintage posters I ran for Heritage last year. I see it pop up in on line auctions about every six months. I was aboard the France and it was wonderful ship.
Washington, D.C.: How does one sell items stolen from museums and the like? Are there collectors who don't mind buying stolen or looted goods?
Rudy Franchi: Yes, there is an active underground market for stolen items. Actually, many items are stolen from museums on order. A collector will desire a particular piece and let be known he is willing to pay x$ for it. Such items disappear from public view and stay with the collector and in many cases with his family for many years. They sometimes surface, but are hard to sell because there is no clean provenance.
Washington, D.C.: There were several shows where items appeared to have come from public records or a public archive. How much do you guys worry about ownership of such items?
Rudy Franchi: We are not concerned with ownership. We only give a verbal appraisal, If the item is chosen to go on air, the producer closely questions the person with the item as to its ownership. I keep a list with me of better known stolen items in my field, but have yet to find one at Roadshow. I guess I'd call over our head of security if one showed up.
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.: Hi there!
About fifteen years ago, a friend of mine brought back an Orthodox hand cross that was clearly gold plated at one time. In the middle of the handcross is an oil painting of the crucified Christ of oil on canvas and this figure is held in place by what looks to be a brass cross frame. There are four medallions of Gospel scenes on the four arms of the cross.
I was told by a well-known Russian iconographer that this cross is probably from the 17th Century and, since it came from Sarajevo before the war and the gold leaf was scratched off, it was probably at one time very well used. The varnish over the painting was so dark that I took it to a restoration expert and had the varnish refreshed. The painting is actually quite vivid, with the loincloth a bright white...
Do you see these sorts of icons very often? How do I actually get information about this specific piece?
Rudy Franchi: Icons are sent to he jewlery table where Burge Zavaian looks at them You might contact him via the Roadshow website.
Columbia, Md.: Does it make your day when you bring a person to tears after they find out they have a valuable antique?
Rudy Franchi: Finding a great item makes my day. Our guest's reaction is sometimes surprising, but I am so focused on the piece we are evaluating, I often miss it altogether.
Chevy Chase, Md.: My family has a large collection of political memoriabilia as my grandfather was very involved in the labor movement during the 60s-we have everything from signed photos to letters from presidents, senators, congressmen and everything in between. I was wondering if you know of any resources for getting this appraised. Thanks!
Rudy Franchi: The leading dealer in political memorabilia is Ted Hake. I don't know if he does private appriasals, but I'm sure he would be able to recommend someone.
Thanks for the chat -- I love the show!
I used to part time at a coin store and I well remember how unpleasant it was to tell someone that their 1957 $1 silver certificate was worth a $1.50 when they were absolutely CONVINCED it was worth hundreds if not thousands. I wouild imagine at the Roadshow, you get this a heck of a lot more than I ever would have. How do you all handle that there if the person does not take it well? If there's any one thing you would like to never see another one on the Roadshow, what would it be?
Rudy Franchi: About once a show someone gets upset with my evaluation. We do not allow appraisal shopping (i.e. going to other appraisers to get another opinion), but if the person is truly obnoxious, I will bring in one of the other people at the table and ask them to evaluate the item. 99% of the time they are within 10% of my price.
Washington, D.C.: What are the more common items that people think are valuable but are really mostly worthless?
Rudy Franchi: Hummels. Hundreds upon hundreds of the ugly little statues are brought into Roadshow every week. There are millions of them out there and I'm convinced that during the week these gnomic creatures reproduce in great number since there are hundreds more at the next Saturday taping. There are only a handfuol of Hummels that are worth more than $50 and the chances of finding one of those are on a par with there one day being a Rex Reed Junior.
Pacolet, S.C.: How do I get a value on a hunting badge with license 1937-38 south carolina?
Rudy Franchi: Try $80 to $100.
Maryland: How much American nostalgia is hidden overseas? Is it possible to make a find outside this country?
Rudy Franchi: Yes. Some of the best itmes i've handled over the years have been found aborad. The U.K. is a major source of great U.S. stuff, especially from the 40s. Some of the great find of U.S. Beatles material have been found in Liverpool for example. The city was headquarters for
Cunard lines and the crew members, back in the 60s, would bring back all kinds of Beatle items (records, collectibles, etc.) from the States to sell in the Beatles hometown. I've made a few good finds in italy, but France has not been as fruitful.
Redding, Calif.: Hi Mr. Franchi, Will you Please give me some advice? My wife found a drawing that we think is of great importance and may very well be an original charcoal and pastel by Galle'n Kallela signed before he changed his name. Dated 1907 with his initials GK. titled Rocks in Snow. There is more writing on the front and on the back of the picture. Mr. Galle'n's name and something else, That we cannot make out is written on the front. Please advise should you like to see an image. We have searched everywhere looking for a value or some information and can find nothing. Thanks
Rudy Franchi: Let me refer you Coleen Fesko at Skinner Auctions in Boston. She is a Roadshow appraiser with expertise in this area. Check the appraiser pages on the Roadshow web site.
Silver Spring, Md.: Is there more competition for good stuff at auctions or estate sales since Antiques Roadshow went on the air?
Rudy Franchi: Roadshow has definetly had an effect on the market. Mostly, it has brought out of hiding many items we thought were in limited supply. A major exampe of this is animation cels. When I first doing Roadshow during the first season 10 years ago, I saw a stream of major animatioin matererial from the Disney Golden Age (Snow White, Fantasia, Bambi, Dumbo) and was amazed since material of this quality was only showing up at major auctions. Over the years more and more cels have shown up, driving down the prices of top animation items dramatically. This has happened in other areas of collecting. But as with all collectibles and antiques, the very top rated items have gone up in value, as with a fantastic cel I found last season showing all 7 dwarfs from Snow White.
Maryland: Are your appraisal prices based purely on experience or do you access books and computer data bases?
Rudy Franchi: 90% of the values I place on items is based on experience. For the rest, I consult a few online databases and at Roadshow, other appraisers.
Wheaton, Md.: Do you ever see a valuable item and try to convince the person that it should be put in a museum?
Rudy Franchi: I have suggested that with some very valuable and/or fragile pieces. Many of the people who bring things to Roadshow would never part with them. They are often family treasures. But i do ask them what will happen when they are no longer around to take care of them. I always advise people to place information on or near a piece since I have many times gone to buy material from a private source and found items that the heirs knew little about.
Olney, Md.: Would a person do better selling at an auction or or a site like Ebay?
Rudy Franchi: It depends on the item. High end items (over $2000) should go to auction. Lower priced items are better on eBay.
Silver Spring, Md.: Is there value in 1940-50 Girl Scout memorabilia?
Rudy Franchi: That's a bit late for Scout material. Values really haven't escalated much for items from that period.
Sticky question: I have a late relative who I think stole some very valuable items from a corporate employer in the 1920s. I don't know where he worked or if he actually stole them. I'd like to sell them, but worry about the ethics involved. I'd return the items if I knew who they belonged to or if he actually stole them (old tiffany vases, a tiffany lamp, rookwood pottery, and a bronze sculpture)
Rudy Franchi: If you don't know where they belong, it is rather difficult to return them. Sell them and give a chunk of the money to charity.
More on stolen items: I've been wondering the point of stealing something well-known like "The Scream." Was it a weird political statement or do you think someone might have actually wanted it? It's not like you can hang it up over your fireplace and tell people it's not a reproduction!
Rudy Franchi: There are many works of art stole to order and kept in private collections.
Washington, D.C.: My husband has many original silkscreen posters for rock concerts from the late 60s/early 70s in the Bay Area. He used thumb tacks in the corners to display them as a student. Do they retain any value after such treatment?
Rudy Franchi: Tack holes are not a major problem with rock posters. The major problem is that there are so many of them out there. This is another area that has been subject to what I call The Roadshow Effect. As soon as we put a high value on something, tons of them come flying out of every closet and attic in America. The value of 60s rock posters have fallen dramatically beause of this.
Steubenville, Ohio: I have an Edison Phonograph, circa 1903-1906 with the huge morningglory horn, the player is like and oak "lunchbox." It plays wax cylinder records. Any idea of the value, it is in great shape, the only thing not factory is the rod which holds up the horn, (the bracket it fits in is original). My late father collected antique phonographs, this was the only one I could confiscate.
Rudy Franchi: Sounds like a great item. We see several a show and they are usually valued in teh $2000 to $3000 range (if in excellent conditon.)
Maryland: I have some old bottles that my brother and I dug up in various New England locales. I doubt there's anything really valuable but I'd like someone to check before I dump them. Who can you recommend in the DC area?
Rudy Franchi: I don't know a specific appraiser in your area for old bottle, but there are several excellent illustrated price guides that your library should have.
St, Petersburg, Fla.: I used to live in Tokyo and picked up a bundle of original Japanese movie posters for the local release of western movies. Some are for major releases, such as Jurassic Park and Dirty Harry 2. Others are for lesser films. They meet your "studio issued, theatrical release film paper" standard from an earlier answer. Do they have value? If so, how would I market them?
Rudy Franchi: There is an intense iinterest in original Japanese movie paper. These would do very well in an on line auction.
Alexandria, Va.: My family still uses NOMA Christmas tree lights which date back to my father's boyhood in the early 1930's. We still have the original boxes, although the boxes themselves are in so-so shape.
Do they have more than sentimental value?
Rudy Franchi: Highly collectible, especially with original boxes. They sell for about $150. a set.
Mclean, Va.: Does every item from all of the hundreds of people who visit the Roadshow get an appraisel?
How do very large pieces of furniture get to the site?
Do any mishaps occur, such as a person dropping an heirloom and destroying it?
Rudy Franchi: We will do 2 items per person. If they bring in a "collection" -- like a book of postcards, I'll take a quick run through the book with them, pointing out more valuable cards. But we get people who bring in entire wagons of material. This season I had a person bring in several thousand pieces of sheet music. I gave the value for about 20 pieces and tried to tell them what to look for and refered them to a price guide. Most of the funiture is pre-selected. For several months before a show the local PBS outlet in the city we are going to visit solicits people to send in photos of furniture they think might be of interest. A committee of Roadshow appraiser (who will not be evaluating furniture at the show in question) select some items and they are brought to the show. Only about 1/2 of them actuall appear on air. Every show we hear a crash, but we are really too busy to follow up on it; I've never had any major breakage at the collectibles table.
Mendenhall, Ms: Rudy, I have a Decker Brothers piano patent date is july 18, 1885. I am interested in finding out the value of this piano if you know that information. It is in excellent condition. Thanks.
Rudy Franchi: Not my field. There are several excellent appraisers of musical instruements on Roadshow. Check the website.
Olney, Md.: Have you come across any of the "Holy Grail" items in your area of interest?
Rudy Franchi: The only one that would fall into the that category is the Spear Enlist WWI poster I found in Indianapolis a few seasons back. It is the rarest of WWI posters and one i've been hoping to see for years. The other posters I would love to find on air are the most valuable movie poster (The Mummy $450,000) and the raresest (the U..S. release version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis from 1926, which I feel would fetch 1 million $, if it ever came up for sale.)
Silver Spring, Md.: Is there any interest in Buddy L? We found an old green one when we cleaning out family house. It is the kind a kid would sit on and ride around. It is dirty but in decent shape.
Rudy Franchi: Lots of collectors for this. I suggest you contact Noel Barrett. You can reach him via the Roadshow website.
Columbia, Md.: Are Chinese artifacts from around 1900 worth anything? I have a carved apricot pit made into a little boat with working doors on the side and a story on the bottom. I also have a carved ivory Buddha, about 1 inch high, with a crack on his head so it can't be really used as a Buddha. And various assorted bamboo people doing things, like carrying a wheelbarrow or a coffin, all about 2 inches long.
Rudy Franchi: These items were mass produced for export and have relatively little value.
Washington, D.C.: I have a ticket to Clinton's last State of the Union address? Does this have any value?
Rudy Franchi: This item falls into the category of things everyone keeps. Most things associated with a famous event take quite a while to increase in value because people tend to hang on to them.
Charleston, S.C.: I have three wooden Joannes Adler flutes they are wooden and we found them in a trunk my grandfather brought back from Germany right after WWII. Where can I find information on these flutes?
Rudy Franchi: I would refer you to one of our musical isntruement appraisers on the Roadshow website.
Arlington, Va.: I have a couple of colorful tin drinking cups that at least slightly pre-date my childhood in the 1950's. They may have been something one got as a bonus in a detergent box. Could you fill in my knowledge gap here?
Rudy Franchi: They sound more like 30s five and dime wear. They sell for about $10 apiece.
Oakboro, N.C.: I have a pair of earrings purchased from a flea market. They are marked sterling silver, pierced with a wire. They are signed Koons and look aztec with a face of straight eyes, nose, and mouth. I was wondering who Koons is, and if these earrings are of value. Thank You.
Rudy Franchi: Such "art jewlery" is quite sought after. Consult one of the jewlery appraisers on the Roadshow website.
Alexandria, Va.: Is there a big demand for Charles Lindbergh memorabilia?
Rudy Franchi: Yes, Lindbergh items are quite sought after. But be aware that a huge number of items were produced and we see quite a few of them on Roadshow. The material that has real value are those closely associated with the actual flight.
Rudy Franchi: This session seems to be finished. I had a great time and there were some quite good questions. Might I suggest you build spell check into this program? Tough to type fast and be accurate. Goodnight and Good Luck!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Appraiser Rudy Franchi answers your questions about the special edition of "Antiques Roadshow: Tomorrow's Antiques" that celebrates three memorable decades: the 1950s, 60's and 70s.
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JERUSALEM, Sept. 25 -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the founder and leader of the Likud Party, was prevented by what his supporters said was an act of sabotage from speaking at an important party convention Sunday, a sign of the deep internal strife within Israel's dominant conservative movement over the recent withdrawal from Gaza.
At the same time, in Gaza City, a senior leader of Hamas said the radical Palestinian group would stop firing rockets into Israel following an intensive two-day Israeli military operation and mass arrests designed to put down such attacks. The announcement followed an Israeli missile strike that killed a senior military leader of the Islamic Jihad, a smaller faction that, like Hamas, rejects Israel's right to exist.
Sharon, addressing the Likud Central Committee on the eve of a critical vote that could decide his future in the party, stepped to the podium as hundreds of Likud officials left the convention hall in protest. As he began to speak, the microphone cut out. The sound could not be restored. After waving silently to the raucous crowd, Sharon left the Tel Aviv Exhibition Center inside his phalanx of body guards.
"It's terrible that such a thing happened, even if it's just a technical problem," said Gideon Ariel, a central committee member who opposes Sharon. "He is the prime minister of Israel for God's sakes, and it just doesn't look good. But whether it will make any difference or not depends very much on how it is spun over the next day or so."
Sharon's speech and that of his main rival for the Likud leadership, Binyamin Netanyahu, were meant to be the first in a series of events this week that will likely determine whether the prime minister remains in the party he helped found 22 years ago.
The 3,000-member central committee is due to vote Monday on whether to hold the party primary in November, six months ahead of schedule. The internal party ballot would likely trigger early national elections, now scheduled for November 2006, if Sharon loses.
Most public opinion polls suggest that Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister from 1996 to 1999, would defeat Sharon if the primary were held today. It would be the first time a party ousted its leader while he was serving as prime minister. Sharon has said a vote to move up the primaries would be tantamount to impeachment, but he has been cagey about whether he would leave Likud if the central committee decides to do so.
In a generational realignment precipitated by the unilateral Gaza withdrawal, Sharon, 77, might join forces with Shimon Peres, leader of the more dovish Labor Party, and the head of the secular centrist Shinui Party, Yosef Lapid, to form a new movement that polls show would fare well in national elections. Both supported the Gaza disengagement.
Those same polls present a quandary for the Likud Central Committee, which is considered more conservative than the party's general membership. Likud holds 40 seats in the Knesset, Israel's 120-seat parliament. Some polls show Likud winning fewer than 20 seats without Sharon as its leader.
But there is deep anger in the party ranks over Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, which an internal Likud referendum rejected soundly last year. Ariel said the decision on whether to move up the primary will likely depend on 500 central committee members who have yet to declare their positions.
In leaving Gaza, Sharon went against decades of Likud doctrine supporting Jewish settlements on land that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. He said doing so would give Israel more defensible borders and protect the long-term viability of its Jewish majority from the fast-growing population of Gaza, where 8,500 Jewish settlers lived amid 1.3 million Palestinians. Gaza and the West Bank are envisioned as the territory for a future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu, 55, resigned as Sharon's finance minister to protest the Gaza withdrawal eight days before it was scheduled to begin. Over the past year, he had supported the plan in the cabinet while seeking to derail it through a public referendum. In his speech Sunday, Netanyahu suggested that Sharon's decision to leave Gaza without first securing concessions from the Palestinians had placed the Likud to the left of Israel's most dovish political movements and politicians.
"They are telling us they will continue with the painful concessions," Netanyahu said. "Don't we have enough with the Hamas state in Gaza?"
The convention came amid violence in Gaza that Sharon aides worry may hurt his chances of defeating the move for an early primary. Following a barrage of more than 40 rudimentary rockets fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad into Israel, the military has begun a series of aerial and artillery strikes inside Gaza.
At least two fighters from Hamas, formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement, were killed Saturday in an Israeli helicopter strike and Israeli troops arrested 206 suspected Palestinian fighters Sunday morning, many of them members of the group. A senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, told reporters in Gaza City on Sunday evening that the group would immediately stop the attacks.
About an hour earlier, an Israeli military aircraft fired missiles at a white Mercedes vehicle south of Gaza City, killing two Palestinians. One of the men was Sheik Mohammed Khalil, 32, the leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing for the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli military officials said Khalil was responsible for a number of attacks on Israelis, including a notorious 2004 ambush near the Gush Qatif settlement bloc in Gaza that killed Tali Hatuel, 34, and her four daughters.
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JERUSALEM, Sept. 25 -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the founder and leader of the Likud Party, was prevented by what his supporters said was an act of sabotage from speaking at an important party convention Sunday, a sign of the deep internal strife within Israel's dominant conservative movement...
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Anti-Bush, And Mincing No Words
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Controversy and intrigue have swirled around Venezuela's Hugo Chavez ever since he was elected president seven years ago and established himself as a leftist force. Chavez's rising influence in Latin American politics, his country's role as a major supplier of crude oil for U.S. refiners and his close ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro have alarmed policymakers in the Bush administration. Last month, on his television show, the Rev. Pat Robertson actually went so far as to suggest the United States should assassinate the 51-year-old Chavez. (Robertson later apologized.)
While Chavez was in New York last week for the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, he sat down with Newsweek-Washington Post's Lally Weymouth. He spelled his dislike for the Bush administration and described himself as a revolutionary. Dressed in a bright red shirt, he noted that he was planning to stop in Havana on his way home so that he could spend several hours talking with Castro.
The opposition in Venezuela feels that it has no space. The leaders of Sumate [a group that supported a referendum vote on Chavez two years ago] say you indicted them for receiving money from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. Why?
You cannot forget that this very opposition governed Venezuela between 1958 and 1998. If they feel like they have no space, it is because they have been cooked in their own sauce. Between 1958 and 1998, Venezuela fell apart. We ended the 20th century with poverty as we have never seen it. The economy was totally destroyed. . . . Millions of Venezuelans were without education, health care, jobs, housing. So if they feel they do not have any room to act, it's their own fault.
But they have many rights: the right to demonstrate, the right to participate in elections. The opposition is utterly divided. The revolutionary forces are totally united. Recently, we had elections. We won 90 percent.
You have said that the U.S. is the most evil country in the world and you have called it a terrorist state. Do you want to have relations with the U.S.?
Of course. Indeed, we have relations and want to improve them.
Why did you call the United States a terrorist state?
The country is one thing -- we have lovely relations with the people -- like in the Bronx [where Chavez paid a visit]. We have economic relations. We have a company [Citgo, owned by the Venezuelan state oil company] that refines 800,000 barrels of oil [daily] . . . We have 14,000 gas stations in this country. We have sent Major League Baseball players here. We have many ties between Venezuela and the United States -- economic and social.
What I said is that this U.S. administration -- the current government -- is a terrorist administration, not all U.S. governments. I entertained the best of relations with the Clinton administration, and I consider myself a good friend of former President Carter.
So what's wrong with President Bush?
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Venezuela's Hugo Chavez spells out his admiration for Fidel Castro and describes the current U.S. government as a "terrorist administration" in an interview with The Post's Lally Weymouth.
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Wrong Way in Iraq
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AS IRAQ MOVES toward a referendum on its new constitution just three weeks from now, many of its senior politicians readily concede that the charter is seriously flawed, and that its approval may worsen rather than alleviate the relentless violence. Leaders of neighboring Arab states and some Bush administration officials seem to share this view. Yet none of these officials or leaders has been willing or able to stop the political process from going forward. Some, like Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, speak hopefully of fixing the constitution by adding an annex between now and Oct. 15. Others, including senior Bush administration officials, more realistically look past the referendum to parliamentary elections at the end of the year. These, they hope, will produce a different and more representative group of Iraqis able to settle the many conflicts that the constitution leaves unresolved.
Faced with sinking domestic support, the Bush administration seems driven by an unwise zeal to produce visible results in Iraq -- such as a ratified constitution -- however problematic they may be. At best, administration policymakers are calculating that moving forward with the referendum offers better odds of eventual success than trying to stop and start over. Yet, judging from what even supportive Iraqis are saying, the risk is very great that the constitutional process will either tip Iraq decisively toward civil war or produce a state far from the goal of a tolerant democracy for which nearly 2,000 Americans have given their lives.
The fundamental source of trouble is not the Islamic extremists President Bush usually speaks about; nor is it the presence of American soldiers. If the protesters visiting Washington this weekend succeeded in forcing a quick U.S. troop withdrawal, the bloodshed in Iraq, and the damage to the United States, would grow far worse. That is because the real problem is the absence of an agreement about Iraq's future between the majority Shiite and Kurd communities and the minority Sunnis, who ruled the country from the time of its establishment until the fall of Saddam Hussein. That disconnect is expressed in the overwhelming rejection by Sunni leaders of the constitutional draft.
In one hopeful sign, the Sunnis are working hard to register their voters and produce a massive turnout in the referendum, a striking contrast to their boycott of January's elections. But the most probable outcome of that democratic participation is that Sunnis will vote overwhelmingly against the constitution -- and it nevertheless will be ratified by the votes of Shiites and Kurds. Even officials of the current, Shiite-led government fear that such a result would cause moderate Sunnis to reject the nascent political system and more fully embrace the armed insurgency, which is led not by foreign Islamists such as Abu Musab Zarqawi but by Iraqi Sunni nationalists.
Defenders of the constitution argue that many Sunni leaders are pro-Hussein diehards who wouldn't accept any democratic system in Iraq and who don't represent most Sunnis. That's probably true, but it's equally true that some Sunni complaints about the constitution are legitimate. Though the details of implementation were postponed, the current draft would allow the Shiites, who already control the national government, to create their own ministate in southern Iraq, which very likely would be ruled by clerics and Islamic law and would closely ally itself with neighboring Iran. It would have its own armed forces and control Iraq's biggest oil fields. The Kurds would have their own ministate in northern Iraq and would probably take over the city of Kirkuk and its oil production. This radical form of "federalism" not only would be ruinous to the Sunni community, as well as the mixed population of Baghdad: It would be threatening and even destabilizing for all of Iraq's neighbors except Iran. It would produce an Iraq that the United States would have no interest in defending.
The only way for Iraq to avoid catastrophe is a political accord among Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, one that can be based only on the preservation of Iraq as a federal but unified state in which resources and political power are fairly shared and human rights protected. The Bush administration, and Iraqi leaders themselves, ought to be focused on striking that national compromise rather than on prematurely enshrining pieces of paper or adhering to deadlines that were set arbitrarily 18 months ago. The longer the delay in achieving real compromise, the greater the risk that Iraqis will be locked into a march toward ruinous civil war, whether the political calendar is followed or not. Many important Iraqi leaders, among them Shiites and Kurds, understand what is needed. The Bush administration must catalyze them into action. If it can do so in the next three weeks, the odds that it can rescue the American mission in Iraq will be much better.
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The proposed Iraqi constitution could tip the country decisively toward civil war or produce a state far from the goal of a tolerant democracy for which nearly 2,000 Americans have given their lives.
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Chapter and Verse
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"I am large, I contain multitudes," Dana Gioia is saying.
The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts stands onstage in the Poetry Pavilion at the National Book Festival on the Mall. He's a poet himself, but these are not his words -- they're Walt Whitman's. Gioia and New Hampshire poet Donald Hall have teamed up for a special tribute to Whitman; they're honoring the 150th anniversary of "Leaves of Grass."
Outside the pavilion, streams of sign-carrying demonstrators ("Bush Lies, Who Dies?") head for the streets around the White House. A helicopter whup-whups incessantly overhead. Applause bursts from the nearby Fiction and Fantasy Pavilion, where someone -- is it Tom Wolfe? -- is getting ready to speak.
Inside, fannies are parked in most of the pavilion's 375 chairs. Hall reads Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." Gioia counters with some of the great man's best-known lines.
"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. . . ."
Poets may not be at the center of 21st-century cultural life, unless you count rappers (and maybe we should, though none grace the Poetry Pavilion today). They may not be household names, like the white-suited Wolfe or the venerable historian-biographer David McCullough. They surely don't move product like Sandra Brown, author of more than 50 bestsellers, who was cracking jokes about her steamy sex scenes at the Mysteries and Thrillers Pavilion a little while ago.
But they're here. And one way to look at the National Book Festival is: Miracle of miracles, the poets have a stage of their own.
So how else should we look at this gigantic annual Washington bookfest, which for five years now -- since its modest beginning in 2001 -- has been organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Laura Bush?
There are a multitude of ways, but we'll keep it to single digits for now.
· It's a defense of the printed word : Gioia is the guy who got his fellow poets that stage. He got the Library of Congress to agree by promising, in 2003, that the NEA would raise the necessary private funds. Gioia's NEA is also the agency that's been sounding loud alarms about Americans' growing reluctance -- or inability -- to read.
Last year it issued a scary report called "Reading at Risk." The report quantified reading's decline in what Gioia describes as "a society that offers an enormous number of alternatives for information and entertainment." If the decline continues, he said last week, we'll be losing something crucially important for democracy.
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"I am large, I contain multitudes," Dana Gioia is saying.
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Freedom Summer
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A southbound train pulls out of Memphis in the opening paragraph of Denise Nicholas's superb novel, Freshwater Road, and aboard it sits an idealistic and anxious young woman named Celeste Tyree, headed for three months of volunteer work as part of 1964's "Freedom Summer." On the empty seat next to her, she spreads out a map of the South and an information sheet from her sponsoring organization that has the disquieting headline "How to Stay Alive in Mississippi."
Vivid and economical, filled with presentiment, this scene begins a memorable book, surely the best work of fiction about the civil rights movement since Ernest J. Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Where Gaines made the movement the climax of a sprawling narrative of a century-long life, Nicholas sets her entire tale within a single summer, as Celeste teaches in a "freedom school" and mobilizes blacks to register to vote in a segregated backwater called Pineyville. By deeply inhabiting every character, by intricately depicting every moment, Nicholas manages to be intimate and epic simultaneously.
Freshwater Road is a coming-of-age story that unfolds against the backdrop of epochal events, particularly the murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. The assassination of Medgar Evers and the development of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party also hover in the wings of Nicholas's narrative. Simply to note those episodes is to be reminded of why the civil rights movement has yielded far more history than fiction -- the work of David Garrow, Taylor Branch, Diane McWhorter, Nick Kotz and David Halberstam, among others. With an actual cast of characters as larger-than-life as Martin Luther King Jr., Bull Connor, George Wallace, Lyndon Johnson and Fred Shuttlesworth, any novelist would have good reason to despair over how invention could possibly outdo reality. Beyond that, the movement represented a genuine example of Good versus Evil, which has a way of turning pedantic and inert when transmuted into fiction.
A first-time novelist best known as a television actress from "Room 222," "In the Heat of the Night" (for which she also wrote) and "The Cosby Show," Nicholas rises to these challenges better than most literary veterans. While she comes to the book with her memories of having performed with the Free Southern Theater in Mississippi during the summer of 1964, she has delivered something infinitely richer and more artistically satisfying than a veiled memoir. She has found the human complexity within the overarching passion play. Rather than dividing her characters into dastardly whites and saintly blacks, she boldly explores the fault lines of class, pigment, geography and character within the African-American community.
Nicholas's appreciation of the untidy truths of human nature starts with her unsentimental portrait of Celeste. A child of the North and of the black middle class -- her father, Shuck Tyree, owns a popular bar in Detroit, and she is attending the University of Michigan -- Celeste volunteers for Freedom Summer for complicated reasons. At one level, Nicholas writes, "She saw herself as a cross between Joan of Arc and Harriet Tubman, the fires of righteousness flaming in her heart." Yet she also recognizes that she'd "come here to shore up her own Negro-ness," guilty that for so long "she'd thought she was above it."
Her immersion into Pineyville, then, brings all kinds of shocks, from outhouses to insects, from the timidity of some local blacks to the ferocity of the white sheriff. Nicholas indelibly conveys the fear that accompanies Celeste nearly every second of the summer, whether she is being beaten and hurled into jail or walking along a dark stretch of road to a pay phone, wondering which passing car might carry her killer. She wrings out accomplishments in tiny increments and at great cost. Three local blacks succeed in registering to vote, but meanwhile the church that housed her freedom school is burned to the ground, and one of the pupils mysteriously drowns in a nearby river. To Celeste's agony, it looks possible that the child, inspired by lessons about runaway slaves, was trying to flee her bullying father.
Toward the end of the book, Nicholas writes with typical insight about the toll on her heroine: "Celeste had packed and unpacked her suitcase a hundred times in her mind. She first started doing it the night the shots were fired through the houses on Freshwater Road and blasted out the back window of Mr. Tucker's maroon Hudson. Whoever had done it surely believed this would scare the Negro people out of their drive for voting rights and scare her back to where she came from. She fled back to Detroit a hundred times, in her dreams, in her walks to the outhouse, in her daily struggle with the lack of running water, in her loneliness."
By portraying Celeste's fears and doubts, Nicholas makes the young woman's commitment all the more impressive and all the more believable. Nicholas also shows just how deeply it unsettles Celeste's family. Her mother, living in New Mexico with her second husband, sees Celeste as hopelessly naive. "You'll give and you'll give," she chastises her in one letter, "and it'll still be crabs in a barrel." A self-proclaimed "race man," or black nationalist, Shuck vacillates between pride and anger at his daughter's grit. While he supports the civil rights cause, at a more personal level he drips condescension for Mississippi's blacks -- so hopelessly "country" while he is "siddity."
As Nicholas paints Shuck during a few chapters set in Detroit, she evokes the imminent changes there, too -- changes that would take the form not of political liberation but self-destructive revolt. Three years before the Detroit riots, Shuck can see the substance of black neighborhoods starting to erode. Nicholas describes him driving to meet his lover, a high-school teacher:
"Shuck drove north on West Grand Boulevard, passing the deep-porched houses not destroyed by the expressway. At night they were presentable, but Shuck knew in the light of day you could see the disrepair creeping around the eaves, the paint chipping off the wood trim, the old people let go of by their delinquent children. . . . In the middle of the day the discarded young men stood around on corners, and women ran from the bus stop to their front doors, hands in their purses, clutching kitchen knives or sewing shears to ward off junkies."
It is impossible to praise Freshwater Road too much, in part because it arrives without a large promotional campaign or much publishing-industry buzz. The credit, then, goes not only to the author but to Agate, the publishing house in suburban Chicago that has brought such a worthy book into print and, with any luck, given Denise Nicholas yet another career, this one as a novelist. ·
Samuel G. Freedman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of "Who She Was: My Search for My Mother's Life." His other books include "Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church."
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Search Washington, DC area books events, reviews and bookstores from the Washington Post. Features DC, Virginia and Maryland entertainment listings for bookstores and books events. Visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/eg/section/books today.
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"We've Exchanged a Tyrant for an Occupier"
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Henry Holt. 424 pp. $26
The 2003 invasion of Iraq and its consequences owe more to the insistent saber-rattling of the removed, intellectual classes than any other war in American history. That so many leaders and commentators now coldly politicize what is, at bottom, a visceral and powerfully emotional experience for those on the receiving end of our invasion has magnified the inability of many Americans to understand the differences between the Bush administration's aspirations and Iraq's realities. It also has depersonalized the Iraqi people in many eyes and fed the irony of the rhetoric from those who claim that Iraqi resistance is driven simply by the fear and hatred of the "freedom" America has brought them. The U.S. leadership views the attempt to overhaul Iraq as power politics, designed to remake an entire region. Most Iraqis, by contrast, measure the invasion and occupation through its impact on diverse cultural forces, strongly held local traditions and a long history of other invasions and occupations.
Enter Anthony Shadid, a Washington Post reporter whose book Night Draws Near gives us -- perhaps for the first time -- a clear understanding of how and why the Iraqi people have reacted to the American invasion and occupation of their country.
An Oklahoma-born American of Lebanese descent, Shadid has already earned a slew of journalistic awards for his work in Iraq, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Indeed, one strains to think of any other person who would be able to combine the same elements of ethnic background, American upbringing, scholarly ability and long experience in the region in order to flesh out the cultural, historical and political framework of the Iraq war.
Reporting with great freedom of movement and without being embedded in a U.S. military unit, Shadid covered the entire period from before the invasion to events following Iraq's January elections. The Arabic-speaking Shadid walks us through Iraq, giving us a set of eyes with which to gauge the country for ourselves. Some of this is "grunt reporting," where Shadid witnesses many of the country's more gruesome catastrophes, both during and after the initial fighting that toppled the Baath regime. Much of the book is almost novelistic; he introduces Iraqis of widely varying beliefs and backgrounds, revisiting many of them several times from the American invasion to the period following the 2004 battles in Najaf and Fallujah, thus allowing us to see experience through their eyes. Now and then, we are treated to historical essays that provide a vital backdrop to understanding just how the Iraqis view the Americans -- and, indeed, each other. In high journalistic fashion, rarely does Shadid cross the line between reporting and personal opinion, especially political opinion.
Throughout all of this, one gets a sense that Shadid, perhaps uniquely among American journalists, knows how to operate in that difficult and often dangerous environment. His Arab background and mastery of the language no doubt helped him move about and get Iraqis to talk openly. His affection for the region and its people is palpable. And in addition, he navigated many intricacies with the help of his erstwhile Iraqi government handler, whom Shadid decided to retain as a trusted employee after Saddam Hussein's fall. The two became great friends. One wonders what might have happened if American authorities had taken such an approach after the invasion, cultivating the best and brightest from among the old regime rather than banishing Baath Party members from further government service.
Several themes resonate throughout the book, many of which should give pause to adherents of the narrow political orthodoxy that seems to define so much of the U.S. debate and analysis of Iraq. American commentators often begin their discussions with the premise that the Baath era was a uniquely monstrous period in Iraqi history. Few Iraqis look back to that period with fondness, but as time passes, many of them lament the loss of order that came with the dictatorship, in contrast to the murderous chaos that defines the occupation.
Indeed, few Americans grasp how deeply Iraqis feel their own history, or how fiercely they have always resisted foreign occupation. "The last four centuries were hell," one burly, aging Iraqi academic says to Shadid. "Despotic, tyrannical, bloody regimes, and most of them were foreign." We learn that President Bush's promise that the U.S. military would arrive in Iraq not as conquerors but as liberators was virtually identical to the words British Maj. Gen. Sir Stanley Maude used in 1917 ("Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators"), when Britain began a decades-long occupation during World War I, defeated the Ottoman Turks and took control of Iraq's oil. "It's a long story, the history of Iraq," a Baghdad restaurateur told Shadid, without apparent irony.
Not surprisingly, Shadid shows us a U.S. administration that has locked itself away from the violence and frequent hostility that rumble outside the "palm-shrouded, formerly manicured villas and palaces" of what has come to be known as the Green Zone. The Coalition Provisional Authority's largely Republican and painfully inexperienced staff was "drawn from the ranks of Washington lobbyists, congressional staffers, policy enthusiasts and the public-relations specialists less charitably known as flaks," Shadid notes. "Most of the staffers so rarely emerged from the [Green Zone] . . . that they had no notion of what was going on in the country they were supposed to rule. . . . The Green Zone was truly a world unto itself."
Shadid breaks new ground in offering us a much-needed look at the human face of the Iraqi people, as well as an acute analysis of the variegated cultural and historical forces that ultimately are going to decide the political fate of Iraq. In one gruesome but illuminating scene, we see a father being forced by angry fellow villagers to kill his own son, who had turned into an informer for the Americans, lest failure to do so set off years of "blood-soaked vendettas." Whatever an American politician may wish to make of this event, it graphically debunks the notion that resistance to the American occupation has been merely the work of "dead-enders" or "foreign terrorists." As Shadid points out, in Sunni regions "tribal authority had grown in the wake of the government's fall . . . tribal code stipulated a brutal frontier justice, which had come to fill a lawless void. This code, rigorous and unforgiving, was paramount."
Indeed, through Shadid's eyes, we see clearly the chasm between occupier and occupied -- a rift that runs far deeper than the usual ethnic divisions between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds that dominate U.S. debates about the country's future. "The Americans in Baghdad framed the tumult in Iraq from the perspective of their own heritage and expressed them in the familiar vocabulary of democratic ideals," he writes. "They had come as liberators." But the Iraqis' own "vocabulary was shaped less by a reflexive celebration of democracy and freedom and more by their own religion, nationalism, and material circumstance." For Iraqis, "justice" trumps "freedom." Most important, for Shadid's interlocutors, legitimacy is the key to future Iraqi politics, pitting the Americans' Westernized constitutional scheme against less formal structures based on religion and tribal leadership. "The Americans never understood the question; Iraqis never agreed on the answer," Shadid writes. "Who had the right to rule? As important to Iraqis was the question of where that right came from -- God, the gun, money, law, tradition?" Visiting Fallujah, he surveyed "the virtual incomprehension between ruler and ruled, staring across a religious divide." The custodian of a local mosque told him, "We don't accept humiliation and we don't accept colonialism." A teacher added, "We've exchanged a tyrant for an occupier."
In analyzing the ethnic debate, Shadid gives us historical and cultural insights that often differ with prevailing views. While most political analysts tend to lump Iraqis together as Shiites, Sunnis or Kurds, his careful examination of the differences between the Shiite factions led by the upstart cleric Moqtada Sadr and the country's most important political figure, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, is essential reading. And while the American political and military focus over the past two years has been the defeat of the Sunni-dominated insurgency, Shadid is one of the few writers to show the almost unbelievable strategic mousetrap playing itself out as the Shiites -- less secular and more susceptible to the influence of Iran -- step ever closer to the prize of national dominance.
Mixed in with such fresh, hard-won insights are passages that combine acute reporting skills and novelistic phrasing, giving the reader a true sense of people and place. During the battle for Baghdad, Shadid noticed "the buses that still, spectacularly, ran their routes, even during the most pitched fighting on the capital's streets." And after a gruesome bombing in Najaf that killed more than 80 people near a Shiite shrine, "the wood stalls lay splintered in blackened pools of grime and blood mixed with charred metal and brick. Along one sidewalk, men sifted with their hands through shards of glass for silver rings blown from their display cases."
Night Draws Near has only two weaknesses. The first is that its reporting on the Kurds is not as comprehensive as its treatment of other groups. The second is unavoidable: The book lacks a retrospective that would sum up the entirety of this chapter in Iraqi history, for the simple reason that the situation continues to evolve so unpredictably. But as a piece of reporting on the forces that are shaping today's Iraq, this is as fine a book as one could hope to read. ·
James Webb is a former combat Marine and secretary of the navy. He is the author of eight books, including the Vietnam novel "Fields of Fire" and the history "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America."
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Search Washington, DC area books events, reviews and bookstores from the Washington Post. Features DC, Virginia and Maryland entertainment listings for bookstores and books events. Visit http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/eg/section/books today.
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AirTroductions Sets Up In-Flight Connections
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Unless you can afford a first-class seat on an airplane, you're stuck in steerage -- a cargo area where solo travelers have little say about the person who will become their seat neighbor -- also known as the person you plan to claw your way through when this thing ditches in open water.
Now, a Web business, http://www.airtroductions.com/ , is attempting to ameliorate the undesirable seat-neighbor problem.
The recently launched site has described itself as "JDate meets the Mile-High Club," though participation presumably is not limited solely to those of the J-ish persuasion.
"Having taken over 500 flights in the past four years, I can count on one hand the number of times that I've been seated next to someone I actually wanted to talk to," site founder Peter Shankman said in a release. "Creating AirTroductions was a labor of love. Hopefully, people can match themselves up and sit next to someone they want to talk to! Imagine what kind of success can come from this, on a business, personal, and friendship level!"
Shankman sounds very much like someone you would not want for a neighbor unless he dialed back the exclamation marks a bit.
It works like this: You buy your ticket as usual, then go to AirTroductions, log in and create a profile. You can post a photo, just like JDate, Match.com or any other computer dating service, then are encouraged to say what kind of person you would like to sit next to. I wrote:
"I'm a 41-year-old male who's looking to meet a younger woman, possibly an aerobics instructor or NFL cheerleader, who has an advanced degree from an Ivy League school and a mid-six-figure salary."
Were I being entirely truthful, I would have written: "A very skinny mime with excellent hygiene and a big bladder." But I figured that might scotch the road test.
The site then asks users to describe themselves. I wrote:
"I'm a 41-year-old male with delusions of grandeur."
I had coincidentally just booked a flight from Washington to Charleston, W.Va. That plane usually has about a dozen passengers, most of whom make me want to ride on the wing. I typed in the flight data, and AirTroductions searched and responded: "No travelers found."
I got the same result when I pretended to be a swinging bachelor, typing in a long-weekend Columbus Day pond-hop to London on Virgin Atlantic. I tried an extra-hip Thanksgiving weekend flight to Iceland. Same thing. But the site continues to search. If it turns up a match, who knows? I can see myself kickin' it with the big-brained aerobics instructor in a natural hot spring in Reykjavik in November.
So far, I have numbers working against me. Because the site is so new, it has fewer than 800 registered users. Tough odds: How many of us could honestly say that, out of a pool of less than 800 people, there's even one you could stand to sit next to on the L.A.-to-Sydney hump?
The site is free to browse. If it turns up a match and the traveler chooses to contact the person, there's a $5 charge.
Or you could spend the $5 on an in-flight cocktail, which will undoubtedly make you witty, fascinating and powerfully attractive to the person next to you.
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Unless you can afford a first-class seat on an airplane, you're stuck in steerage -- a cargo area where solo travelers have little say about the person who will become their seat neighbor -- also known as the person you plan to claw your way through when this thing ditches in open water.
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Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Were Like Night and Day
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Reinforced armies of federal search teams, medics and National Guard troops began fanning out into wind-whipped and waterlogged southwestern Louisiana and coastal Texas yesterday, racing to prove the government had learned from its disastrous missteps earlier this month on the Gulf Coast.
And while yesterday's early assessments were positive -- with few reports of unanswered calls for help or broad communication breakdowns that crippled the response to Hurricane Katrina -- officials acknowledged that Hurricane Rita had not presented the ultimate test for which they had prepared.
Hurricane Katrina "was so much more massive. Most people still don't understand that," said Michael Lowder, deputy director of response operations at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington. In New Orleans, the levees failed, "then you had the civil unrest piece of it. That was something that was not planned for, not anticipated. . . . That affects the whole response."
Although floodwater was still rising yesterday in some low-lying towns and wind restricted damage-assessment flights, state and federal authorities cautiously projected confidence in their ability to respond to the storm in coming days, at least partly because it was far less damaging. President Bush, who visited the Texas emergency command center in Austin, praised government agencies as "well-organized and well-prepared to deal with Rita."
Officials also attributed their success to the sometimes chaotic evacuation of 3 million people from Houston and other cities, an exodus left incomplete in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29.
"The damage is not as severe as we had expected it to be," FEMA Acting Director R. David Paulison said in Washington, despite swamped roads, failed bridges and extensive structural damage across several cities and southwest Louisiana. "Every mayor that we have talked to is crediting the evacuations with the fact we have no reported deaths at this time."
Texas and Louisiana leaders said yesterday's relative calm reflected greater preparation and cooperation at all levels.
"We learned a great deal from Katrina that was put in place in Texas," Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said in Austin at a news conference with Gov. Rick Perry (R).
"We are all working together as a team," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) said from Baton Rouge, appearing with U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, in charge of the federal Katrina response. "Our efforts to keep a communications network up have paid off."
The differences in the scale of the two storms were plainly visible. Katrina triggered an "ultra-catastrophe," in the words of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- cutting a 90,000-square-mile swath across three states, before triggering a flood that swamped the nation's 35th-largest city and broke down civil order.
In addition to its bigger size, Katrina also struck later in the day than Rita and moved north more slowly, hampering efforts by air crews to get aloft during daylight to grasp its impact.
After Katrina, Lowder said that "basically, everything was shut down for so much longer. This one [Rita] moved out faster; we were able to gather more information quicker."
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Rita's Evacuees Head for Home
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DALLAS, Sept. 24 -- Millions of evacuees from the Gulf Coast emerged from emergency shelters and motel rooms Saturday to be told by officials to stay put and not head home, but a massive return migration began anyway, despite widespread power outages, flooded roadways and long lines for gasoline. And in many counties to the south and east of here, it was still raining heavily.
As many as 3 million people from coastal Texas and Louisiana fled from Hurricane Rita, causing enormous traffic jams on the highways Thursday and Friday. Some had to drive as far north as Oklahoma to find shelters or lodging. In Dallas, the Red Cross shelters in the city convention center and in Reunion Arena were turning away evacuees late Friday. The east Texas city of Lufkin saw its population of 35,000 triple, and after official shelters filled, local churches and a rodeo arena began taking in desperate stragglers.
In Houston, Mayor Bill White on Saturday pleaded with residents not to return to the city, warning them that 675,000 households were without power, that gasoline was scarce and roads were liable to become overwhelmed. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) amplified the message of "don't worry, don't hurry" and said evacuees should stay put for a couple of days at least.
But with the news that Houston and Galveston had been spared severe damage, a lot of folks were packing coolers and luggage back into their cars and trucks for a return journey. "We're going home," said Don Walker of Houston, as he loaded the family SUV at a downtown hotel with his children and their coloring books. "I know there's going to be traffic. But we got all day, and we got a full tank of gas and so we're just going to take it easy but make our way back." Walker said he had plenty of supplies at home in his garage in west Houston and was prepared to wait there for the lights to come back on.
There were news reports that some of the interstates leading back to Houston were filling with traffic. As many as 200 service stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were running low on gasoline or had run out, and tanker trucks to resupply them had not arrived at several stations visited Saturday afternoon.
"You got to do what you got to do," said Brian Hamilton, 25, of Houston, who visited one station only to see a sign telling him "NO GAS!" Hamilton said he had a quarter-tank left and was willing to risk it by driving south and seeing what he could find. Hamilton and his girlfriend had spent Friday night sleeping in their pickup truck at a supermarket parking lot. His plan? "If we start to run out of gas, I'll get on a back road and beg, borrow or buy some from a boy wants to make himself 50 bucks."
Some evacuees from coastal Louisiana appeared to be less gung-ho to hit the road as reports came in of widespread flooding there. At an emergency shelter at the county jail here, where evacuees were sleeping on bunk beds in cells, several have been here for weeks, since Hurricane Katrina hit. They said they would probably have to wait a little longer. (The jail is still operating and filled with inmates, who have been moved to a different section of the facility, away from storm evacuees.)
"As soon as I can, I'm going to be gone, but I hear we're still under water, so we're stuck," said Charles Divincenti, of St. Bernard Parish south of New Orleans, who watched his trailer float away during Katrina. "I was holding onto the flagpole in my brother's yard," said Divincenti, 65, a retired deep-sea diver on Gulf Coast oil rigs. "They came and got us with a boat." The last thing he did before Katrina hit, he said, was release his 11-foot albino python from its cage. The snake will probably be okay, Divincenti said, but he is not sure what is happening to his 12 brothers and sisters. "We're scattered to the winds."
While the evacuees who fled Houston and Galveston have homes and jobs to return to, those who left Beaumont and Lake Charles were desperate for information. "We don't know what it looks like," said Gloria Hernandez, 41, of Beaumont. She and her sister and her children were staying with friends of friends, and Hernandez drove down to the Red Cross shelter at Reunion Arena Saturday afternoon hoping to get answers. "But I don't know what they know." Officials at the shelter advised her to remain in Dallas. She said she probably would. "I think I need to go and get some sleep."
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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U.N. Body Cites Iran On Nuclear Program
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VIENNA, Sept. 24 -- The board of the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution Saturday saying that Iran violated its nuclear treaty obligations by secretly developing a nuclear program. But in a sign of deep division, the agency delayed reporting the matter to the U.N. Security Council, as required by statute.
The resolution states that "the history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities" had resulted in the "absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes." The United States has said Iran has ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran has said its program is strictly for generating energy.
"The international community is . . . not satisfied with the level of confidence-building measures Iran has so far taken," the IAEA's chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said. IAEA inspectors have spent more than two years in Iran but have not found proof of a nuclear weapons program there.
But in a rare display of disunity on the 35-member board, which traditionally passes resolutions unanimously, just 22 countries voted in favor of the measure. Twelve countries, including Russia, China, Pakistan, South Africa and Brazil, abstained. One country, Venezuela, opposed it.
Disagreement on the board had forced the European Union and the United States to retreat from their initial demand that Iran be reported immediately to the Security Council, a move that could trigger international sanctions. Instead, the resolution obligates the board to report Iran to the council but leaves open the issue of when.
The vote came after weeks of intense lobbying and a day of frantic, last-minute bargaining that ultimately failed to achieve consensus, illustrating the strength of Iran's evolving alliances, diplomats and analysts said. U.S. and E.U. efforts paid off, however, persuading Russia and China not to vote against the measure, while India changed its early opposition and supported it.
"Iran's activities, its pattern of deception and its confrontational approach are of great concern to the world community," U.S. Ambassador Greg Schulte told reporters after the vote. "We are concerned that these activities pose an increasing threat to international peace and security."
The head of the Iranian delegation, Javad Vaeidi, told reporters that the divided vote demonstrated that the resolution had the backing only of Western countries and was "politically motivated." In a statement to the board, he said Iran was "prepared" to work with the atomic agency to build confidence and increase transparency. But if Iran is reported to the Security Council, Vaeidi added, "we will have no alternative to pursue and preserve our rights."
Iran threatened to begin enriching uranium, a key step in producing nuclear energy and weapons, if the board decided to refer it to the Security Council. Diplomats said Iran would probably deliver a more detailed statement on the matter at the IAEA's general conference Monday.
The resolution adopted Saturday declared that Iran was in "non-compliance" with obligations to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that required it to report its nuclear program, which was developed in secret over 18 years and was exposed about two years ago.
The decision to delay a decision on referring Iran to the council sets the stage for weeks or even months of wrangling among Iran, the E.U. and the United States as they try to woo others to their positions.
The task will become increasingly difficult for the E.U. and the United States because the composition of the board changes next month and several countries, including Cuba and Belarus, that tend to be unfavorable to U.S. policies, will take up seats currently occupied by countries that voted in favor of the resolution Saturday.
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World news headlines from the Washington Post, including international news and opinion from Africa, North/South America, Asia, Europe and Middle East. Features include world weather, news in Spanish, interactive maps, daily Yomiuri and Iraq coverage.
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Girl, 15, Is Charged In Fatal Fight at School
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A 15-year-old girl was charged yesterday with second-degree murder in the death of a Montgomery County ninth-grade girl who was stabbed after a high school football game Friday night, police said.
Kanisha Neal, 15, died after being knifed at James Hubert Blake High School about 8:30 p.m., police said, during a fight in the parking lot between two groups of girls. The stabbing stemmed from a weeks-old feud over one of the girls spitting at another, they said.
Authorities would not release the suspect's name because she was charged as a juvenile, but they said she was an Olney resident who attended Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring. She is being held at a youth detention facility in Rockville.
Witnesses and police said the fight broke out as students were emptying the parking lot after Sherwood defeated Blake, one of its football rivals, 44-0. Police officers and school officials who were at the game ran to the parking lot to break up the brawl and administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation to Neal.
The Rockville High School freshman was taken to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, where she was pronounced dead.
The stabbing was the second fatal assault in a week after a Montgomery County high school football game.
Stephone Wiggins, 23, of Germantown died of injuries received Sept. 16 when he was beaten with a miniature baseball bat after a football game in Germantown between Seneca Valley High School and Northwest High School, police said.
That fight, which investigators said also stemmed from an earlier feud, took place off-campus. The two suspects in the case -- Quatrell Oladele Adedeji, 18, and Perry Kevin Sims Jr., 17 -- did not attend the football game at Seneca Valley but met Wiggins later in the evening near the game's end.
Adedeji has been charged with attempted murder and possession of marijuana, and Sims with attempted murder, assault and carrying a concealed deadly weapon. Both will face upgraded charges because Wiggins died, police said.
Montgomery County school and police officials said they do not believe the fights were gang-related or had anything to do with high school football games, which draw thousands of young people who come to cheer or just hang out with friends.
"Kanisha loved going to games," said her mother, Joyce Neal, crying during an interview yesterday. "She's not a troublemaker. . . . She was my baby girl."
Neal said authorities told her that her daughter had been stabbed once, near the heart.
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A 15-year-old girl was charged yesterday with second-degree murder in the death of a Montgomery County ninth-grade girl who was stabbed after a high school football game Friday night, police said.
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One Big Day To Be Seized
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Because every aspect of the Presidents Cup tries to be a classy and refined but less stressful version of the Ryder Cup, there is a tendency to deny the obvious plot line that runs through this event. But why avoid it? The U.S. team, after losing the past two Ryder Cups by a stunning combined score of 34-22 and merely getting a tie in the last Presidents Cup, desperately needs to regain some of the worldwide stature it has squandered in recent years.
If you can't beat Europe and you can't beat the Best-of-the-Rest, what's left? A mixed scramble against Tibet? The United States has not won a Ryder or Presidents Cup since 2000 and has only one Ryder win since '93. While it's important to be sportsmanlike hosts, it's also time for Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and a team with 11 of 12 players ranked in the top 25 in the world to give somebody a Sunday spanking in one of these world-status exhibitions. The paper tigers need a win on grass.
In particular, the U.S. team, which enters today's final 12 singles matches in an 11-11 tie with the Internationals, needs to start erasing the memory of embarrassing itself last year in the Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills, where a European team with indisputably inferior talent routed the fussing, confused and sulking U.S. squad, 18 1/2 -9 1/2 . The Presidents Cup team has nine of the 12 men from that Ryder Cup, including the main culprits from that squashing on home soil: Jim Furyk (1-4), Mickelson (1-3), Woods (2-3), Fred Funk (0-3) and Davis Love III (2-3). This is their chance to regain bragging rights against a truly elite International team on the home turf of Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
"It's really important that they win this week. It's big for the American guys," said Tom Lehman, the U.S. Ryder Cup captain in '06. "The best of all possible worlds would be to win this week and go beat the Europeans in the Ryder Cup" in 2006.
So there you have it: orders from headquarters. If not here and now, with Ernie Els of the International team injured and Jack Nicklaus serving as U.S. team captain, then when and where? If nothing else, the U.S. team should benefit from having Nicklaus, not (shudder) Hal Sutton, as strategist. You haven't seen Tiger and Phil paired together this week, have you? Or seen Mickelson benched? Perhaps as a result, they're both playing better.
Yesterday, the Americans laid the groundwork for a Sunday assault. Entering the day trailing by a point, the U.S. team won the morning foursomes matches (alternate shot), 3-2, then split the afternoon four-ball matches, 2 1/2 - 2 1/2 . However, from a team psychology point of view, the concluding image from the last stroke of the day's final match could be unsettling. Fred Couples, often a Presidents Cup star, had an eight-foot birdie putt on the 18th green for an outright win that would have given the United States a one-point lead. He missed, failing to send a message. Or, perhaps, reiterating an old one.
Nonetheless, the U.S. team has escaped the two-man portion of the competition, which has often been its undoing. This time, the Americans have "played well with others," especially the teams of Mickelson with Chris DiMarco and fellow Texans Justin Leonard and Scott Verplank (2-1-1). Woods lost his first match when paired with Couples, so Nicklaus immediately switched the world's No. 1 into a tandem with Furyk. Together, they went 2-0-1.
Over the past three days, the U.S. team appears to have made dramatic progress with compatible pairings, rather than the kind of team chilliness or controversy that has contributed to losses in four of the last five Ryder Cups. Yesterday's play even provided the inspiring sight of Furyk carrying Woods on his back much of the day. "Jim was unbelievable," said Woods. After Tiger birdied the first hole in an afternoon four-ball match against Vijay Singh and Stuart Appleby, Furyk made the team's next seven birdies to keep their tense match all square until, as if on cue, Woods birdied the 16th hole to put the pairing ahead to stay.
"It would have been nice if we would have had the opportunity" to play together in the past, said Woods, who has had 14 different partners in past Presidents and Ryder Cup play. "Most of the time, guys are paired up with players that have similar games. Obviously Jim and I play golf differently. But I think the most important thing is the way we approach the game. Our attitudes are very similar -- the way we compete."
If both Woods and Mickelson have now found partners who are matches in temperament, then future U.S. teams may fare far better. Woods needed the fiery, cocky Furyk, who makes up in grit what he lacks in swing mechanics. Mickelson and DiMarco simply like each other and enjoy playing together.
"You've seen lots of unbelievable golf shots this week," said DiMarco, proud that, so far, the U.S. team has played exceptionally.
Today's matches offer a perfect opportunity because the International team is, on paper, far better than the current European crew. The Internationals have tons of talent -- 10 of their 12 players ranked in the top 33 in the world. If Els, ranked No. 4, had not missed these matches because of knee surgery last month, the Internationals might actually have had the edge in charisma here, led by Vijay Singh (No. 2), Retief Goosen (No. 5) and Adam Scott (No. 7).
Handicapping this final day should be a golf fan's delight. The United States caught a break in Els's absence and has survived the two-man-team days it feared. Now, at least in theory, the United States should have an edge in depth of talent, as well as a distinct "home-field" advantage at RTJ, a majestic, 7,335-yard course that has matured into a layout with a major tournament feel.
However, the Americans have ghosts to slay, whether they like to acknowledge it or not.
"It's going to be a coin toss," Mickelson said.
For the U.S. team, it's time that one of 'em came up heads.
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The United States needs a win in the Presidents Cup to restore some of the luster it has lost in recent blowout losses at the Ryder Cup.
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Taylor's 'Maturity Level Has Shot Through the Roof'
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Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor's haymaker hit sent Dallas Cowboys wideout Patrick Crayton flying a few yards backward from the first-down line Monday night. After the pivotal incomplete pass on third and four from the Redskins 42-yard line with about two minutes left during Washington's 14-13 comeback victory -- Taylor was the least demonstrative defender. He accepted congratulations from jubilant teammates as he sauntered with a scowl, getting ready for the next play.
Taylor's businesslike approach on the field has been a stark contrast to last year, when he sometimes taunted opponents or screamed obscenities after a hit. "He used to have little antics after the play," said safety Ryan Clark, one of his best friends on the team. "This year, he's just more focused: 'I'm going to play football.' "
Off the field, Taylor has also made striking changes. He is no longer occasionally tardy for meetings. He lifts weights more frequently, is more vocal in meetings and has taken a leadership role on the field.
"His maturity level has shot through the roof," linebacker LaVar Arrington said. "I don't know why it is. But I've seen a very, very significant change in his maturity level. Just his focus is different."
Cornerback Shawn Springs added: "He's been totally different this year than he was last year. You obviously see that he's more mature. I don't know if the incident in Miami scared him or what. The way he carries himself, the way he studies, what he understands: His approach to the game is totally different."
The most significant difference is that the 6-foot-3, 232-pound free safety has tackled the one area that his coaches had felt might keep him from achieving greatness: Taylor has become more of a student of the game after relying on his sublime athleticism and instincts last year.
"When I came in as a rookie, a lot of the stuff I didn't think was necessary," Taylor said Thursday. "As I've become older and wiser, I began understanding, it helps. It counts. It lets you get on the plays a little bit faster instead of guessing.
"You always should improve as a player and as a person. Every day is a different day to get better and more wise about the game. I just take things in stride, and put as much as I can into football while I'm here."
Taylor faces a mandatory minimum of three years in jail after being charged with one count of aggravated assault with a firearm and one misdemeanor count of simple battery stemming from a June 1 confrontation in Miami. Taylor admits that the experience provided him with a new perspective, but said he would have shown some maturity regardless of his court case.
"I'm getting better as a person and I don't want to just be a mediocre player," said Taylor, whose trial date has been postponed until Oct. 24, although it is expected to be delayed until after the season. "I don't want to be just a guy holding a spot on the team. I want to try to be the best at what I do. If that means putting in more work in on my end, that's what I'm doing to do."
As director of player development for the Redskins, John Jefferson's duties include counseling players and helping young players adjust to the NFL life. Jefferson said that NFL players typically mature most between their second and third season. So Jefferson doesn't necessarily believe that the Miami incident is the reason Taylor has made strides as a professional. "What brought that on I don't know," said Jefferson. "I'm not going to sit here and say it was the incident."
Arrington added, "If it is, it was probably a blessing in disguise because he's conducting himself a lot differently."
Last year, Taylor was fined nearly $20,000 for personal fouls and violating NFL uniform rules. Taylor, nicknamed the "Grim Reaper" by Arrington, developed an aura with his bone-rattling hits -- that sometimes were late. Taylor also inserted glistening gold plates over his front teeth. "What he did do last year by his behavior on the field, he let it be known he wasn't a guy that you really wanted to fool with," Clark said. "People were scared to come across the middle. Once you established yourself like that as a presence physically, now he can play the mental part of the game."
Teammates stressed that Taylor's affable personality hasn't changed. He remains mostly self-effacing in a locker room with several loud voices. "He's always been a good guy, quiet," Clark said. "But he's really trying to grasp what it means to be a real professional."
Taylor admits to being more careful about the places he goes because of the Miami incident. Instead of being in the typical spots for a 22-year-old NFL player, Taylor has limited himself this season.
"I just took heed, with the problems I've had," Taylor said. "What I do is I just try to make it hard to get caught in any of that stuff. I'm going to be at home. I don't mind going to a guy's house. I don't mind going over to shoot pool, talk crap, watch a game, TV or something like that. Other than that, I'm here about business: football and winning games. We can hang out and talk. But I'm not here to mess around."
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Info on Washington Redskins including the 2004 NFL Preview. Get the latest game schedule and statistics for the Redskins. Follow the Washington Redskins under the direction of Coach Joe Gibbs.
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Fiscal Policy: Why 'Stupid' Fits
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Hurricane Rita heads inexorably westward, threatening to add to the human and financial costs of Hurricane Katrina. And when it comes to taxes and spending, Washington acts as if nothing is happening.
True, a group of very conservative Republicans issued a list of program cuts on Wednesday under the imposing name "Operation Offset." The cuts that the Republican Study Committee proposed have won their sponsors praise for making "tough choices." Of course the sponsors won't actually have to live with these cuts, because Republican leaders dismissed most of the reductions, especially in congressional pet projects and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
And it's hard to give the fiscal conservatives too much credit, since they would cut $80 billion from Medicare and $50 billion from Medicaid over five years and suggest reductions in school lunches, rent subsidies for the poor and foreign aid, among other things. The idea seems to be that to help Katrina's poor and suffering victims, other poor and suffering people will have to sacrifice.
Nonetheless, permit me to offer a little cheap grace on these conservatives. At least the Operation Offset crowd has produced this list of cuts and forced its own leaders to disown them. The exchange showed how fundamentally stupid our budget policies have been over the past five years -- and, yes, I'll defend that strong word.
Here's a fact getting far too little attention: The cost this year alone of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 comes to $225 billion. In other words, the revenue lost because of tax cuts going through this year without any congressional action would more than pay the costs of Katrina recovery.
Why describe our government's fiscal policies as "stupid," rather than, say, "ill-advised" or "misguided"? The softer words of conventional opinion writing imply disagreement but suggest an honest coherence in the other side's view. Hey, we all disagree on stuff, right?
But our current budget policies are built not on honest coherence but on incoherence or, even worse, a dishonest coherence. The president and members of Congress always insist that they are fiscal conservatives who believe in balanced budgets. Yet their actions bear no relationship to their words, and labels such as "conservative" have no connection to their policies. Our federal purse strings are in the hands of fiscal radicals.
I'd have much more respect for these guys if they just came out and said: "Look, we love deficit spending. That's why we waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cut taxes at the same time. It's why we'll talk about offsets for Katrina and Rita but never enact them, except maybe a few cuts in programs for the poor. All we really care about are passing tax cuts -- and popular spending programs that get us reelected so we can enact more tax cuts."
Not very politic, I'll grant you, but honest. Vice President Cheney came as close as anyone to this form of honesty when he spoke in support of the tax cuts on dividends shortly after the 2002 elections. His words, alas, came at a closed meeting. According to Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty," Cheney referred to the former president in insisting to his administration colleagues that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and that Republicans owed themselves more tax cuts. "We won the midterms," Cheney said. "This is our due."
All hail the former Halliburton CEO for being candid enough to put the accent on power and privilege, not on policy and those oh-so-boring fiscal concerns. I guess balanced budgets aren't for "big-picture guys."
Which brings us back to that word "stupid." My dictionary tells me it means not only "lacking in ordinary intelligence" but also "dazed" and "stupefied." The crowd running our government is dazed and stupefied by a theory that sees throwing ever-larger sums to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts as so good, right and important that all the ordinary rules of finance and economics can be thrown out the window. If it was already stupid to pursue more tax cuts once the country decided to wage a large war on terrorism, it is supremely stupid to stay on the same course now that Katrina has added to our fiscal burdens and Rita, God help us, threatens to add more.
Or maybe it's the rest of us who should be called stupid if we keep taking these guys at their word. Are we all so dazed that we'll keep believing them even after a hurricane has blown away their alibis?
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Our fiscal policies are stupid, throwing ever-larger sums to the wealthy and all the ordinary rules of finance and economics out the window.
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IT SHOULDN'T BE necessary to write in praise of the three Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who this week voted in committee to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States. Supporting overwhelmingly qualified members of the opposite party for the Supreme Court used to be the norm, not an act of courage. Yet, set against the general opposition from Democrats to the nomination, and truly intense pressure from interest groups, the votes cast by ranking Democrat Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) and Wisconsin's Herb Kohl and Russell Feingold took guts. Their votes ensure that Judge Roberts will not take the helm of the judiciary perceived as the representative of only one party, and they guarantee that at least some Democrats -- albeit sadly few -- will have the moral authority to demand Republican support for qualified liberal nominees in the future.
The larger Democratic opposition to Judge Roberts represents a disturbing departure from longtime Senate practice. Of the current members of the court, only Justice Clarence Thomas had substantial opposition. The other seven, including Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia, received among them only one no vote in committee; six of them, in other words, received unanimous committee endorsement. The seven received, again among all of them, only 21 negative votes on the floor. In refusing to support an indisputably qualified conservative, Democrats send a message that there is a strongly partisan component of the task of judging -- something those who believe in independent, apolitical courts must reject.
The three senators who voted yes are taking a beating from liberal groups for it. Ralph G. Neas of People for the American Way issued a vicious statement about Mr. Leahy, declaring him "complicit" in any votes Judge Roberts might cast that "retreat from our constitutional rights and liberties." He is dead wrong. The decisions Judge Roberts will write are his own responsibility, not Mr. Leahy's; life tenure for federal judges, in fact, exists precisely so that judges will be insulated from politicians and so that politicians are not responsible for judging.
The liberal groups have made clear that they will oppose any nominee from this administration, regardless of qualifications, temperament or testimony. Nan Aron, who heads the Alliance for Justice, all but announced as much in a Post story yesterday, saying, "We expect the next nomination to ignite a firestorm of opposition." Never mind waiting to find out who the nominee is or what he or she happens to believe, though she told us yesterday that the president could avoid the firestorm by nominating the right person. In opposing Judge Roberts, some Democrats are following these groups off a cliff. The Judiciary Committee Democrats who
refused to jump deserve credit for showing backbone.
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The three Democrats who voted for John G. Roberts in the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking quite a beating from liberal groups. They deserve credit for showing some backbone.
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Taking on the Week's Big Issue
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This is not a good sign. Several hours before Rita's landfall -- and without even the threat of a direct hit on New Orleans -- the hurricane's winds alone pushed so much water toward New Orleans that by noon on Friday, one patched levee had already come unpatched and a dozen or more blocks had re-flooded.
This is disturbing for countless reasons, not least of which the fact that the toxic water pumped out of the city is flowing right back in. But more pertinent to our current discussion is that if the city experiences more massive flooding, that will pile on the cost of cleanup and rebuilding.
Once again, this raises the question: Are we absolutely positive we want to rebuild New Orleans? (And is everyone involved clear on exactly how that rebuilding should be done?)
Sure, Donna Brazile (a noted Democratic campaign strategist), wrote an op-ed after listening to Bush's speech last week declaring that she's ready to stand up and salute and do anything she can help the president rebuild New Orleans. And yes, many of us have a sentimental attachment to the Crescent City. But Bush made some bold promises "to clear the ruins and build better than before" and, he insisted, "this great city will rise again."
Perhaps by "build better" he meant "build smarter," as several editorial boards and op-ed writers have advised. The Arizona Republic offers this suggestion: "Rethink, don't re-create." Where houses in low-lying areas will be razed, the Republic says, parklands should be developed instead of building a "phony, Disneyfied replica of old neighborhoods."
A Washington Post editorial poses several questions about how the city should be rebuilt. In addition to questioning whether the lowest parts of the city should be rebuilt, it offers this intriguing thought: "Should other houses be constructed -- as houses in the city were a century ago -- on stilts?"
A letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times makes a three-point case for not rebuilding New Orleans at all: 1) The levees could break again. (Yep.) 2) Lots of displaced people would rather settle in less dangerous spots with more jobs. 3) The money would be better spent helping to resettle people beyond the "below-sea-level danger zone."
Regardless, before any rebuilding can begin, the levees would need to be stabilized, strengthened and raised, and that could take a long, long time.
Unless, that is, the plans change to something more along the lines of Klaus Jacob's idea: In a Washington Post op-ed, Jacob raises the novel possibility of making New Orleans into an "American Venice" -- essentially a floating city, as least for as long as it takes for natural processes to raise the level of New Orleans by depositing sediment over the parts currently so far below sea level. Of course, this could only be done at a gigantic -- possibly unthinkable -- expense.
An editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution considers the unpleasant fact that "the nation's charitable and governmental infrastructures have been stretched thin by Katrina." We hope the destruction from Rita won't be nearly as devastating, the board writes, nonetheless "a major reconstruction and support will still be necessary." Assuming that is true, can we afford it? Even on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars we're already spending on Iraq and post-Katrina reconstruction?
We're talking about huge expenditures when our country is already is massive debt, David Broder warns, quoting one fiscal policy expert as saying, "I think it's 1925, and we're headed for 1929." And that was before Rita came into the picture.
"By putting Katrina on a credit card, Bush II lays the load on future generations," argues Lionel Van Deerlin in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Van Deerlin points out "the obvious -- that we should deal with the new national emergency on a pay-as-you-go basis. Yes, even if that means invoking the dreaded 't' word."
But, as we discussed earlier, the administration contends that all this can be done without raising taxes.
Is it wise to go so much deeper in debt to rebuild a city that is likely to be decimated again within a century or so -- possibly before we've even finished paying off the reconstruction?
By Emily Messner | September 23, 2005; 12:20 PM ET | Category: Looking Ahead Previous: Rebuilding After Katrina: Pork and Tax Cuts | Main Index | Next: Hurricanes, Refineries and How Oil Prices Could Afftect Post-Katrina Reconstruction
As a friend of the U.S. from a detached perspective, three things seem urgently clear:
1. Call in the Dutch "masters of the sea" to study, design, engineer and construct the necessary diking.
2. Appoint heads of federal agencies on merit/experience instead of political hacks/morons.
3. Stop the diversion of funds to congressmen/senator pet projects from vital projects.
If you can't cut out the shameful pork, how can you possibly cope with all the challenges you face?
Those of us across the world who love and admire the U.S. despair at what we see happening.
Posted by: WDL | Sep 23, 2005 11:55:56 PM
The Dutch are doubtless masters at building dikes, but they have never had to contend with a category 5 hurricane in the North Sea.
Posted by: DFP | Sep 24, 2005 1:20:06 AM
We need to look at an even larger picture. For many reasons Americans think they are above nature. We try to build anywhere at any cost and think we can look at our environment and laugh as we (in our minds) defeat. Katrina and Rita prove otherwise. Whether or not the massive, frequent hurricanes of late are humanly induced is in immaterial; they do tell us in no uncertain terms that we need to attend to basics before we venture off into new Disneylands. We have to ask ourselves: 'How many more Katrinas can we handle?' Then, the next question: How many more Katrinas will there be? Look around. How secure is the infrastruscture in your state? Can your local, state and federal authorities make you feel secure? Sure, nothing in life is guaranteed, but if a government cannot secure your safety, why do continue to support it?
Posted by: DK, Seattle | Sep 24, 2005 3:43:50 AM
We need to look at an even larger picture. For many reasons Americans think they are above nature. We try to build anywhere at any cost and think we can look at our environment and laugh as we (in our minds) defeat. Katrina and Rita prove otherwise. Whether or not the massive, frequent hurricanes of late are humanly induced is in immaterial; they do tell us in no uncertain terms that we need to attend to basics before we venture off into new Disneylands. We have to ask ourselves: 'How many more Katrinas can we handle?' Then, the next question: How many more Katrinas will there be? Look around. How secure is the infrastruscture in your state? Can your local, state and federal authorities make you feel secure? Sure, nothing in life is guaranteed, but if a government cannot secure your safety, why do continue to support it?
Posted by: DK, Seattle | Sep 24, 2005 3:47:35 AM
Since so many of the resettled victims of Katrina have expressed their intention not to go back to New Orleans, it would seem that a revised vision of rebuilding might be better than simply plowing on with sentimentality. The French Quarter is a gem this U.S. will not want to lose, as the port is a resource we need. The 'inner city' has much to gain from its present, and future, relocating.
Posted by: Ruth | Sep 24, 2005 5:20:45 AM
No one seems to take into account the government's own studies that forecast the Gulf to be 2.5 feet higher by 2050.
We are a nation of throwing away the old and embracing the new. The nation is ready to help when help is truly effective, but New Orleans is a city that no longer has a purpose beyond nostalgia.
Posted by: Jim Freeman | Sep 24, 2005 6:21:05 AM
Failure to rebuild New Orleans would signal to the world & the terrorists that the United States is spent ,its vital force dissipated in the feckless pursuit of profit & pleasure.
Posted by: James Horton | Sep 24, 2005 8:05:04 AM
My god, does this mean that once the beautiful Everglandes are developoed that this kind of disaster will happen there? Geez, I am so looking forward to shopping and living in the Lennar built retail centers and homes on the Everglades where the Keys begin. Can you imagine, running into Macy's for some nice new and stylish underpants and a pair of shoes, and then hitting Starbucks for a coffee and as you leave a quick drop into Ritz for some film in case you run across a Manatee crossing the Overseas Highway? How can we not desire this? Look, New Orleans built all over the place, goddamnit, covering hundreds of acres in the wetlants,with,the okay of the Army Corps of Engineers and the local politicians, so in rebuilding let's suggest they use pilings ... yes, it must be rebuilt .... but do the levees first and do them right ... Donald Trump can do it damn well. Thanks
Posted by: frank simmons | Sep 24, 2005 8:08:12 AM
So Jim Freeman says New Orleans is a city that no longer has a purpose beyond nostalgia, does he? His post does not show where HIS hometown is but it's clearly not New Orleans as mine is, so he's clearly not reeling from still hearing everyday almost four weeks out now and counting and usually in a near-at-breaking-point tone from another someone of everyone he's known all his life's voice on the phone telling of being displaced all at once and their lives all suddenly so completely shattered and there has been no more abrupt irrevocable fracturing and diaspora of hundreds of thousands of just-a-moment-ago intact American families now scattered along various roadsides across this great land ever in American history and for godssake Jim didn't you hear the national child registry center right there in Alexandria VA when last weekend they had a few seconds to show and announce each missing child a family reported or each orphan child found who yet has no one no known kin AND IT TOOK NOT ONE BUT THREE ENTIRE DAYS TO GET THROUGH THAT WHOLE LIST man, and I say to you Jim and Emily too: No one NOT from New Orleans has any least bit of moral authority to be saying anything at all right now as to when or whether or how New Orleans should be rebuilt. When the time is right, only those with bonafide New Orleans credentials should self-determine what should then be rebuilt where how if at all in New Orleans. OR all of you so blindly arrogantly northeast liberals or whomever feeling free to run your mouths however 24/7 some days it seems about how it's just not worth it to rebuild New Orleans when you have clearly have no idea in the world why YOU and the rest of the country so desperately need New Orleans then YOU are yourselves stripping from the remaining surviving people of New Orleans the very LAST thing many of these still-so-suffering human souls now possess: their basic human dignity (meanwhile death toll as of yesterday 9/23: 841 NO, 1078 Gulf Coast Katrina, and they haven't even drained the deepest-flooded parts of the city where the most elder bodies will be) -- but fyi the country as a whole could far easier sustain the loss of virtually all of the entire elected leadership currently meeting in the city of northern charm and southern efficiency than it could any of the people of the late great city of New Orleans whose people were scrappy quirky self-reliant yeah pretty poor some of them but even so living real sustainably like how could the DC metro area get by if 20%+ of its people didn't even have cars at all because the metro area had a good enough cheap enough reliable enough public transportation system that they didn't absolutely need them to run their daily lives? Even just considering the price of oil these days, even just strictly Darwinianly speaking now, am not so sure it was the brightest idea to abandon all those in the Superdome, you know the black babies and the white greatgrammas who died of dehydration altogether now (surely those babies were both "life" and "chosen" so one might have think that some one of anyone who's ever exercised breath, vitriol, money, rhetoric, and/or anger on EITHER side of the abortion debate in this country shoulda felt a tad of conscience twinging that these newest American citizens were dying then in their weeping mothers' arms USA! USA! and no one was helping their mothers prevent those their dear babies then-dreadful fates), and so really what we all saw in New Orleans was essentially a sacrificing of those who were walking the walk of modeling for the rest of the characteristically clueless DC metro area policymakers (whose strong suit is not usually known to be thinking outside the box) something of a more truly communitarian way to live: which if you saw the Post photo of the big white guys who finally arrived five days late when the Commander-in-Chief finally was forced to notice by aides still too nervous to tell him days later what had been going down then all week in New Orleans well those guys came out of the Dome pushing two little black kids in a cart and the white guy ahead of them was pushing a thin white-haired old white lady in a wheelchair that the photo caption said was 107 years old and walking tall right there beside her holding her hand was a black child looked to be a girl about six or seven. And that photo speaks the spirit of New Orleans and why the rest of the country especially that all inside-beltwayers so need to learn from the spirit of New Orleans (apparently still so unfathomably alien to the spirit of the inside-beltwayers). So Jim or anyone else who still needs to get a clue about this if Halliburton is allowed to no-bid rebuild New Orleans as it has Baghdad and the neocon social conservative planners now salivating at the thought of oh golly gee :) it's not everyday we have a completely blank slate to roll out all at once all our spanking-new-previously-untried-all-in-one-place-before ideas to create conservative cities in OUR own image and likeness, thank you very much, if they that is are allowed their conservative bangs for all those billions of bucks the President promised to rebuild New Orleans and they guess he can't back down now but really and they're grousing mainly because they don't realize that the President had to try to transform himself into that pale and wan imitation of LBJ as a vain attempt to wipe off his hands the blood-guilt he'd all too belatedly realized was right there all over them yes he finally did realize that the President on his own did realize that but by the time he did he also at the same moment had to have had the simultaneous shocking horrible bitter realization that it was also then just too late so that when he did finally realize THAT and really knew what he coulda done shoulda done even really wanted to do now but just didna anymore have the option to do now (there is that about death: the finality we all humans sometime somewhere come up against at first just to utter complete disbelief) but when the President finally reaized it was too late to do anything else about the direct life-destroying consequences of his belated attention to New Orleans the last week of his vacation at his ranch in Crawford that's when he could think of nothing else to do but throw money at the survivors of all those who could have still been around with us walking on God's green earth if only he'd thought to send the troops that he did send later only when it was too late just a little bit sooner because the President's finally realized and it's yes brought him up short that even he can't raise the dead and so many of those who wouldn't be dead today had he raised the one finger to help them sooner, made the one phone call to get out the troops sooner that he made eventually anyway but now as even HE the President (though apparently not yet all his men e.g. certainly not yet any still grousing about the President's attitude toward all that money) realizes he made unconscionably late and he's not quite sure yet even now how he's gonna talk about that now and in the future with HIS higher Father. So Jim, Emily, anyone, if all you're talking about not rebuilding is the neocons' planned Halliburton-rebuilt New Orleans, I'm likely with you all the way, sweethearts, don't bother, that may be new, but it wouldn't be New Orleans. As for New Orleans now W's Alamo that's a different story there's an American responsibility now there so much so that all Americans need to just step back reverently and let those grieving recover enough to decide how, when, where they might wish to rebuild their own homes if that is even possible and what "smart rebuilding" they who live there want to do wherever whenever it's clear it isn't and in the meantime all other good-hearted American sisters and brothers throughout this great land might spend some time profitably pondering some basic budget policy questions now begging to be answered. W helped make New Orleans look like Baghdad and hurt our national security by making us look worse than the "Third-World" countries that were offering to help OUR citizens in THEIR own American city when their OWN American President couldn't or wouldn't. But the President didn't take El Salvador's offer of troops to keep order on the streets of New Orleans and he didn't take Cuba's offer of humanitarian supplies for the people in the Superdome but HE the Commander-in-Chief who had sent 35-40% of the LA/MS National Guard to Iraq and 47% of LA's high-water rescue equipment and ALL of MS's satellite phones but one so that one didn't have anyone to talk to them did it very effectively that Armageddon-like morning on that flattened MS Gulf Coast? HE the Commander-in-Chief while turning down lots of proffered aid from lots of other good-hearted countries in the world community who couldn't STAND to see OUR citizens' suffering on THEIR TV screens he didn't get there himself in time to relieve his own suffering people when he's twice now before us all sworn by the most solemn oaths hand on the Bible before the Chief Justice of the United States of America that he would defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. So you wanna ask the American people now MR. President which they wanna rebuild Baghdad or New Orleans? Coz we sure don't have the money left after all your tax cuts and breathtaking run-up deficits and the billions spent to build a brand-spanking-new Goliath Homeland Security Dept. that failed its maiden voyage big-time as surely as did the Titanic because it sure didn't protect the homeland security of those American Louisiana and Mississippi homelands did it now Mr. Bush not nearly so well in fact as the fully-deployed home-grown local historic first-responder LA National Guard did all my life growing up there surviving Betsy in 65 and Camille in 69 there so we woulda done so much better if only you'd just left us alone and stayed out of our faces with your new Dept. of Homeland Security and left our trained first responders LA National Guard home where they belonged doing what is their day job at time of hurricanes anyway and that is protecting the people of LA as it always had been before and as THEY had always been able to do before this but no before this time you sent them to Iraq and elsewhere overseas so THEY couldn't protect us then in our American homelands when they were fighting wars for you overseas (in Afghanistand too I believe and no doubt also in other postings) and the real perfidy is that you didn't even put back an equal number of their 3000 on the ground right away before Katrina struck even just to replace those numbers of first responders you'd STRIPPED away from your fellow American Louisiana and Mississippi citizens before the storm stripped their historic first line of defense at home to serve as your infantry in Iraq for your off-budget war that was killing us before and now really is, really has, did starting 0dark630 8/29/05 in New Orleans and the body bags arent' all filled yet, not near. So now you Mr. Commander-in-Chief have given the American people a stark choice even while YOU are still trying to pretend you haven't: Baghdad or New Orleans, what's it gonna be?
Posted by: Cynthia Drew | Sep 24, 2005 8:14:06 AM
Hey Cynthia, I'm wondering how many blisters you have on you fingers after your little keyboard tirade? I believe you missed the point Jim Freeman is trying to make. It's a simple one at that. He's simply asking if it is wise to spend good money after bad. Perhaps you may not have noticed, but amidst your rambling rhetoric, you are saying the same thing .
Posted by: Larry Czachor | Sep 24, 2005 9:41:24 AM
Have we forgotten the threat that terrorists pose to the United States? We can assume that terrorists have been observing the devastation that breached levees can cause and that they are hoping we rebuild New Orleans behind the levees. All the terrorists would have to do is use explosive devices to cause even worse devastation than the first time--this time without any warning!!
Posted by: Eric E. Danielson | Sep 24, 2005 9:44:50 AM
I understand the grief, shock, suffering, and justifiable anger of all the people who were forced to flee their homes, but I think that the folks who are being asked to pay $200+ billion to pay to rebuild New Orleans, including me and every other American taxpayer, have all the moral authority we need to have a say in whether that sundered city is rebuilt where it was, somewhere else, some other way, or not at all.
Posted by: Pablo | Sep 24, 2005 9:47:03 AM
For many decades our society has rebuilt after devastation in troubled zones whose troubles will continue: the Florida Keys, Miami, Puerto Rico, Galveston, etc, after hurricanes; San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc, after earthquakes and fires; various areas of volcanic activity; many parts of the West where people build houses in forest fire ecosystems. If abandoning areas that face recurring threats is to be the new principle, let it apply first to the rich white areas.
Posted by: Steven Flint | Sep 24, 2005 10:06:38 AM
The New Yorker's Talk of the Town comment on Katrina began, "New Orleans is an affront to Nature and Nature dose not take kindly to such affronts." And, aas global warming proceeds, bringing both more frequent storms and rising sea levels, nature's wrath will grow. Obviously, then, the esensible thing to do would be to abandon the city's present site and rebuild it on some higher, drier place. Or one might leave a kind of bare bones thinly populated port there but move its quaint French Quarter to, say, Las Vegas, which already has replicas of a number of picturesque old cities such as Venice.
This, as I say, would be the sensible thing to do, which is presisely why it won't be done. The city will be rebuilt with higher and, hopefully, stronger dikes. And re-rebuilt after the inevitable next Katrina. Why? Partly because of plain old political/bureaucratic inertia but also because real estate interests won't permit it. They have too much invested in the big high rise buildings downtown which survived the storm. They want the gov't (i.e., us taxpayers) to rebuild the city's infrastructure at its (i.e., our) expense so that they can continue to do business as usual.
Posted by: Caspar | Sep 24, 2005 10:18:02 AM
Well rebuilding NO next to Las Vegas is patently absurd, not simply for the staggering ersazt/kitsch quotient, but because Las Vegas itself is also an affront to nature--a burgeoning metropolis in the middle of the desert. Simple madness at the other end of the spectrum--where NO has too much water, LV has none. It's sucking dry the Colorado river and the energy costs for all that air-conditioning are obscenely wasteful. Another typically moronically sited Great American City.
Posted by: justbrowzing | Sep 24, 2005 10:52:39 AM
I agree that NO ought not be written off and forgotten as a folly of American-kind. But I read that the levee system is more than 300 miles long. Any single break could spell disaster. It's been said that the Alamo fell because it's perimeter was too big for the defensive force to man properly. Put differently, the resources required to maintain the wall were more than they could manage. The Brit force at Rourke's Drift held off a force at similar odds with similar resources successfully. They were able to do this by collapsing their perimeter to a point where they could apply enough resources to prevent a catastrophic break in the wall.
NO's current levee system requires huge resources to stave off disaster. Does any other city have this requirement? It defies logic a bit and this fact won't escape the country at large, who will be funding this. Perhaps NO could be rebuilt with a smaller network of superior levees (cat 4 or 5 anyone?). Abandon the lower levels altogether? Keep the higher ground areas, the historic areas and the port?
Posted by: toshiro | Sep 24, 2005 11:12:16 AM
To the pundits who say NO has been around for 300 years: take a look at a really old map. It was a series of islands in a swamp. Tired of riding boats to the neighbor's house for a cup of sugar, locals started to build walls and drain the area. Not elevate it, just drain it! Now look at a NO metro map (Kenner and Metairie). Want to develop more real estate? Simple. Go out in a boat, build a wall, drain the water area, and presto, new subdivision. I know the US needs to keep a port on the Mississippi, but move it to Baton Rouge, above the water line.
Posted by: Sunshine | Sep 24, 2005 12:02:11 PM
Port cities don't develop by accident. Currents are a very important factor in deciding our major port cities and we can't change the fact that New Orleans is a natural port city.
New Orleans can be a grand experiment for the United States. Think of the potential we have to test and build effective public transportation systems and innovative information technology systems integration into the city itself. This rebuilding process could be exciting if it is managed in a fiscally responsible way (i.e. Delay acknowledging that there might still be pork left to cut, and yes, even raising taxes).
Posted by: Tina A. | Sep 24, 2005 12:23:45 PM
Steven is correct that very many American cities are "illogically" sited per 21st-c. disaster planning thinking.
That's because most early human cities back to ancient times were sited in floodplains because lots of commerce then moved by sea.
At 289 years old, New Orleans' siting was before America's birth.
E.g., the swampy Washington DC metro area might also go underwater throughout for some weeks if it took a direct hit from the right kind of Category 3, 4, or 5 killer hurricane.
It really wasn't the best place to put a capitol city maybe by our disaster planning standards today either --
and it was planned to be there:
it's the relatively rare case of a capitol city planned from scratch for its site.
(So Q: if a hurricane took out DC, would everyone agree it would be stupid to rebuild it where it is now?)
FYI all my life in New Orleans all the levees in the system were carefully tended including during annual spring floodtime snow melts down in the Quarter at the spot where the river most sharply turns.
The local Guard knew e.g. how and where to sandbag the levees and watch the sandbags closely and between 19.5 and 21.5 at times everyone held their breaths and rushed to throw on more sandbags if the levee started even leaking anywhere or sometimes even just if they saw a stain.
The United States' responsibility for the destruction of an American city exists here on a scale we have never before seen in this country anywhere anytime.
No, I can't say absolutely that HAD the 3000 LA Guard historic New Orleans hurricane-trained first responders with specific strategic knowledge of local terrain and levees NOT been deployed overseas and INSTEAD been deployed in New Orleans before Katrina hit that those particular levee spots absolutely would NOT have been breached then.
But neither can anyone else say absolutely that they would have.
Imagine if the months before 9/11/01 the President had somehow under his authority as Commander-in-Chief legally deployed 3000 locally-trained NYC firefighter first responders (whose day job is no more to be regular Army infantry fighting overseas than the National Guard's is).
What if when those Saudi terrorist-driven planes hit and took down the twin towers the consuming fires had then swept unabated because the guys who normally would have fought fire were gone and the President hadn't sent anyone at all much less anyone as trained and competent to take their place before the tragedy occurred?
Q: What if the ensuing fires had taken out all of Manhatten, reduced it to the wasteland the 180 square miles of New Orleans was, just by fire not water?
(Would any Americans be saying oh we can't afford to rebuild NYC, that was a stupid place for a city to be built anyway is a separate question, not going there now.)
But the common-sense answer to the Q is the opposite: that the 3000 Guard COULD have made the same life-saving difference to the City that they always had.
We'll never really know, will we?
Because thank God the President's finally learned THAT lesson, i.e. to get the Guard back to States before hurricanes in what should be the strength they historically had to deal with hurricanes before Iraq.
Just as importantly, the President pre-Rita apparently also learned to stage relief resources for immediate post-storm life-saving BEFORE the hurricane hits because, as 9/11 also taught everyone, most lives are saved in the first 48 hours -- then you mostly find corpses.
So as we all knew growing up in New Orleans you can't wait as Sec'y Chertoff did with Katrina for LA and MS to try to move help you haven't prepositioned for post-storm relief quickly afterwards on roads that may be gone.
Most importantly, from the President's and the Governor of Florida's and the Governor's of Texas's not only attitudes but also own concrete on-the-ground Guard deployments pre-Rita --
that were so different from the President's analogous help (which was zip) to either the Democratic female Governor of LA OR the Republican male Governor of MS pre-Katrina LA/MS last month --
we now know that all three of them, that is
2) the Governor of Florida and
3) the Governor of Texas
now strongly believe that having the National Guard fully deployed and prepositioned before hurricanes strike is very important.
It's also just common sense.
FYI I am sitting here in Miami and we got Katrina 84 hours before LA/MS did on Thursday night when it was a just-barely Cat. 1 storm (even till a few hours before landfall it was supposed to be just a heavy rain event, not even a hurricane at all, and that mainly in Fort Lauderdale over the weekend).
But F a.m. we woke up, and she had taken out 1.1 million households' power in south Florida (mostly in Miami-Dade) -- which took 10 days to restore here (long past Katrina' slam of LA/MS Gulf coast, folks down here were also sweating it out).
The President surely knew this from his brother if from nowhere else.
He besides had made the Fed disaster relief declaration in advance for LA/MS pre-Katrina as he did this week for FL/TX pre-Rita.
That is what allows the United States to send in the cavalry when a State looks like it's got something coming at it too big for the State to handle.
We also just got Rita this week before TX now did.
Everything here was closed M afternoon and Tuesday while we held our breaths to see would she come up to Miami-Dade again from Key West.
But on the strength of the President's pre-storm disaster declarations alone this week pre-Rita (which turned out to be nothing here thank God and only a Cat 2 over the Keys) the Governor of FL had 2000 Guard and all kinds of prepositioned supplies waiting just out of harm's way at an appropriate six-hours' driving distance (from predicted landfall in the Keys) in West Palm Beach.
The Governor of TX got similar help and prepositioning and 5000 Guard called up pre-Rita predicted strike in TX today.
I'm glad the President has learned from being asleep at the switch for LA and MS, and gave in advance to FL and TX what he did not give to LA and MS at their time of gravest danger from predicted hurricanes.
I'm glad we don't have to see another American city needlessly destroyed before he learned that lesson.
And I'm glad that the country seems also to have learned the very costly lesson post-New Orleans that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
But the country as a whole is now saddled with the bill for New Orleans because the President did not do for LA and MS pre-Katrina what he clearly needed to, had notice of, and could easily have done.
And we now know that because the President did a lot more this week pre-Rita for FL and TX in advance of lesser storm threats for those states than Katrina was predicted to pose for LA and MS, especially for New Orleans.
The President had an even graver moral responsibility to have sent the same kind of help pre-Katrina to LA and MS as he sent this week pre-Rita to FL and TX because he knew he'd stripped both LA and MS pre-storm of 35-40% of their National Guard historic first responders to deploy overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other postings.
Never had LA and MS before had to face a major hurricane having been laid so defenseless by any President.
Posted by: Cynthia Drew | Sep 24, 2005 1:42:16 PM
This week's New York Review of Books has a great lead article on why it is simply an utter impossibility to not rebuild New Orleans from a pure shipping standpoint. It is worth checking out if you get a chance.
Posted by: Steven | Sep 24, 2005 2:07:50 PM
WHY REBUILD NEW ORLEANS: I live in NO. My house was severely flooded and I probably have lost it. my law practice is stalled. I want to go home. I want to rebuild, but I want to rebuild smart. Smart rebuilding is far easier than many think. condemn vast areas of the city below sea level. fill those areas in and raise the ground level to above sea level. they did it in Galveston after a hurricane devastated it. the first floor of tall buildings became basements. building codes should be changed to require at least basic hurricane proofing to withstand a CAT 5, or do not issue building permits. Raise the levees like they did in Holland. these steps will insure NO withstands a future CAT 5 and in the rebuilding process no will become a world class City. waiting to go home, harry hoskins
Posted by: harry Hoskins | Sep 24, 2005 2:23:25 PM
After all the nonsense we've withstood about building institutions and structures that will help Iraqis and Afghanis come into the modern Western world, it appears that rebuilding New Orleans is just a little too hard. We create debt at previously unthinkable levels absent a world war, but we think this might just be a little too expensive.
If there's any reason for the federal government to exist that doesn't compel the rebuilding and strengthening of an American city destroyed, I don't know what that is.
Posted by: John Thompson | Sep 24, 2005 2:54:18 PM
I have to admit that it will be better not to rebuild new orleans for Americans' sake. Major reason for that is as mentioned above, New Orlean is below sea level and it can flood again if the levees fail. The levees are not that reliable. It would be much better to construct a city elsewhere safe or expand some part of city to take in all those people. I wish Bush would realise it. HE is trying to make amends of what he has done but it will only pain Americans economically and mentally. I am still quite enraged with Bush's reaction and preparation for this disaster u know... stupid white man as Michael Moore described him.
Posted by: Inyoung | Sep 24, 2005 3:41:55 PM
The people can be relocated. America is vast and can absorb them fairly easily. For the poor folks it is hard to imagine any worse city than New Orleans. There is a great sentimental attachment to New Orleans because of the party atmosphere, but that can be recreated anywhere there is enough cheap booze and sexual tolerance. Other than sentiment there is no reason for people to live there as opposed to, for example, moving inland above sea level. A container port and logistics facilities are useful, but vast neighborhoods of poor people with no future (because their neighborhoods offered none) should not be reconstructed. If we are going to rebuild a city, why not start fresh? Louisiana has plenty of room inland. Deliberately building below sea level and between river and lake was a poor decision, and replacing the vulnerable mess would be absurd. Generations of poor planning (the millions spent to land the Saints would have built better levees or paid for an effective evacuation support organization) by Louisiana officials allowed NO to be vulnerable, then bungled the evacuation. This city itself is the problem, and I hope Rita finishes off the wreckage. Not from malice, but because New Orleans isn't necessary.
Posted by: Sobac Retok | Sep 24, 2005 4:04:50 PM
To suggest that New Orleans not be rebuilt suggest a sad igorance of the history of this country, the importance of the city to the commerce of this country and that the proponant has never been there or if so, never had the sense to get off Bourbon St.
Posted by: Paula Dlugosz | Sep 24, 2005 5:10:16 PM
$200 billion to rebuild a city for half a million people? That's $400,000 per person. Ask any of the New Orleans folks if they'd rather have a crummy house in a cool city again or $2,000,000 for their family of five to go somewhere else.
Posted by: Bill | Sep 24, 2005 9:00:46 PM
WaPo, Atlanta Constitution, LA Times, Az Rep, San Diego rag...YGBSM!! That's what N.O. needs...the collective wisdom of the individual ignorance of the uninvolved to wax profound on what to do with a thing called N.O. as if it is a can of soup that can be placed in another cupboard. You idiots. You ultra-maroons, you imBECiles...just stay out of it.
Caspar, the city will be rebuilt with higher and, hopefully, stronger dikes. And re-rebuilt after the inevitable next Katrina. Why? Partly because of plain old political/bureaucratic inertia but also because real estate interests won't permit it. They have too much invested in the big high rise buildings downtown which survived the storm. Those sound like great reasons to me. If I own a 60 story building in N.O.. I'm putting it back into operation...not bulldozing it. What are you smoking?
Cynthia Drew, riveting Joyceian free verse notwithstanding, you're an arrogant idiot of the first degree. You ought to be thanking your lucky stars the MSM spent so much time on downtown N.O. so those poor souls could be rescued. Drive East a couple of hours and then North an hour. Tell those folks STILL, to this day, stuck in their destroyed houses with no major TV coverage or federal help how bad it is for the folks evacuated and getting three hots and a cot. I don't think your poetic waxings will get such a warm reception. You arrogant, blind fool.
Harry you want to rebuild different, great...I'm with you...get off your ass and do it. Battle the insurance companies and get what they owe you just like everybody else...good luck. But don't wait for the Feds to solve your problems...do it yourself. You can't tell me that N.O. didn't bring in the bed tax etc. not to have a better looking downtown area. You squandered it..admit it. N.O. partied-on and kicked the can down the road on modernization. Now the bill has come due. It's going to take work but the money's there because the port and refineries are there. You just need to clamp down a bit on the fat cats. You need to structure the city's finances better. It's your city...take ownership of it.
Sobac...what a simpleton you are. Like these people are part of a big LEGO box that some beltway wonks can just plop anywhere and build into Trumanville. Have you been inland and above sea level in Southern LA? Do you even have a clue why N.O. is where it is? Not needed? YGBSM! Have you no knowledge of American physical and economic geography? Building below sea level was a poor decision? Like N.O. was part of some master plan begun in the Reagan era.
Em Messner...get a real job.
Posted by: Willy | Sep 24, 2005 10:02:37 PM
Should NEW construction be permitted in any region that is high risk??
Should a new house be built in Miami that is historically just as likely to be flooded by a hurricane as NO?
What is the point of not allowing people to rebuild in NO when they will just relocate and build in another disaster prone area of the country...?
The problem with disaster planning based on PAST events is that it makes you ignore all the other areas of risk (just ask Bush: He was so fixated on teh risk of terrorism disasters that he was blinded to the risk of hurricane disasters).
Posted by: Mike S. | Sep 24, 2005 10:08:07 PM
Most US cities along either East or West Coasts are high risk for either flooding or earthquakes for disaster planning purposes.
How to plan better for new construction in any of them is different question than what help Mississippi, Louisiana citizens should expect to get rebuilding their cities and homes after delayed US disaster response increased loss of life, suffering, property damage in their areas.
Also doubt anyone still alive east of New Orleans even if in destroyed house with no federal help yet would say he was worse off than any of hundreds dead still being found, counted in New Orleans.
Posted by: Kathy E. | Sep 24, 2005 11:47:48 PM
I'm at least 5th generation American on my father's side and on his father's side, all those ancestors are buried in New Orleans. I don't live there now, but want it built smarter. That means asking the people who live there now what they want. Filling in the land that is below sea level and making those really low areas into a park makes sense to me. The oldest part of the city is already built on higher ground. That's why the Garden District and French Quarter do so well. My brother was at Tulane when Betsy came through. Nobody said things like, "don't build New Orleans." All the same places flooded. Many people will choose not to return and that's a great opportunity for them. For those who can return, they certainly should and please take the time to think about how to rebuild your city smarter. All of coastal Louisiana is in need of repairs. The idea of making New Orleans like Venice is funny. Venice in the wetlands, so there can be snakes and alligators in the canals? Don't think that's a good idea. It works in Florida in places, but don't see New Orleans as a floating city.
Posted by: Lisa J. | Sep 25, 2005 12:10:56 AM
You couldn't find a more worthy project to spend money on then restoring New Orleans. There are some as good, but none better. Particularly after five years of this train wreck of an administration and its sole mission of facilitating graft to already filthy rich corporations and individuals, while restricting more and more the spirit that makes America great, and turning it into a one-dimensional caricature of itself -- a bad right-wing one-liner. America needs the spirit and music of New Orleans now more than ever. Rebuild it whatever the cost -- then flood Washington DC.
Posted by: John F. | Sep 25, 2005 12:18:36 AM
Lisa J -- 1) If you fill in the dirt, won't it just sink like it had before?
2) Why should the federal gov't be obligated to rebuild NO, especially if they're going to do everything the same? Perhaps we should write a clause "this is the last time". If NO gets waylaid again, LA can fix it. LA needs to seriously get onboard with planning the new NO. Looking at the history pattern, total apathy. Don't rely on the Feds next time, please! It's LA's deal -- make sure it gets done.
Posted by: toshiro | Sep 25, 2005 12:31:59 AM
I am a diplaced New Orleanian who lost his house in the flood. I've been floating around the country from place to place since being washed out. Currently I'm in the Washington D.C. area.
Here's why I think we should re-build New Olreans. The rest of this country really sucks. I had no idea what a homogenous nightmare you people live in. I would propose that New Orleans and possibly the state of Louisiana secede from this nightmare you people call America and conduct the reconstruction ourselves.
What those of you opposed to our city's reconstruction obviously don't understand is that outside of California and Texas, Louisiana is possibly the most important state to the county's economy. 18% of the country's energy supply runs through Port Fourchon alone...25% overall is supplied by the state. Over 30% of the fisheries are supplied by our state. Look around the room you're in right now....I gauranty you something in that room came through the Port of New Orleans.
That's the just the economic side...the cultural contributions of our city and state to this country are unquantifiable. So I'm all for secession. Then you won't have to worry about how it's going to effect your taxes. We could finance our own reconstruction in ten years with the tax income we currently send to federal government. Our problem is that we have serviced this country's most basic needs since before there was an America, at the expense of our own health, wealth, and safety. From the petro-chemical plants which sit behind that 300 mile levee wall which create the plastics you need to package your food, to the pipes in Port Fourchon which pump the precious life blood of our economy and allow you to drive your gas guzzling SUV down to Applebees to eat the shrimp we've harvested from our "uninhabitable" wetlands, to the cheap IKEA chairs your fat asses sit on which came through our shipping lanes from Asian markets.....if we broke away from America and taxed the natural resources which we supply to this country, we'd have the cash to build 100 foot levee walls instead of having to contend with surburbanite idiots who question why we should rebuild a city which has contributed more to the heart and soul of this country than any other. An America without a New Orleans is a soulless wasteland of strip malls, bad restaurants, shitty corporate music (excluding Austin), cookie cutter townhomes, and greed driven attitudes which think life is about acquiring a larger quantity of crap they don't really need. An America without Louisiana is just plain screwed. So for those of you living above sea level, pretending you understand the importance of New Orleans, or lack thereof, to this country, for those of you pretending you know the engineering challenges of our levee system, for those of you pretending you know the "bottom line" on the cost of reconstruction....let me assure you that you know nothing of which you speak. There are precious few cities in this country which in sheer economic value could justify the cost of being rebuilt after near or total destruction....New Orleans is one.
Posted by: Jason Berry | Sep 25, 2005 10:50:31 PM
After reading Cynthia Drew's impassioned rhetoric,I would suggest that she try sense instead of emotion. If she feels that no person not in NO should have a right to comment on the desirability of spending multiple billions to rebuild her city, I would agree as long as NO puts up the money. However, once we start devoting finite national resources to that effort, it then becomes the duty of all of us to decide if such a massive expense is worth the effort. Her analogy of rebuilding NYC after 9/11 ignores the fact that the attack occasioning the expense was not likely to be a recurrent event. The money spent rebuilding a city which is at constant and increasing risk should be spent only if has been a cost/benefit analysis; is it worth expending very major funds to save a place which frankly is (and for the foreseeable future will continue to be) at increasing risk because of rising sea levels and the decreasing protections afforded by shrinking wetlands? When considerng this, we have to consider whether to take on such a massive and ongoing project, balancing the benefits with the ongoing and ever-increasing expenses involved.
Posted by: potaboc | Sep 29, 2005 4:47:18 AM
Ok ya`all don't rebuild New Orleans, cut it loose, let it go its own way. That is only fair, if the country doesn't want to pay for New Orleans and the rest of coastal Louisiana then cut it loose. From what I can see southern Louisiana doesn't need the rest of the country. Heck, they got farming, cattle, shrimp and fish, great music, hundred's of years of culture, a vital seaport, so they don't really need us, yeah, they even have oil . . . wait a minute, if they have oil maybe we should reconsider. I mean if we cut Louisiana loose we may have to invade the next day to protect our national interests. Say, do you think Ray Nagin is hiding something in that Superdome? Some sort of toxic-biological-weapon-of-mass-destruction? I heard he wouldn't let certain federal authorities into the city the first few days, that he used some sort of confusion ruse, at least that is what Mike Brown was saying earlier this week, that Nagin and Blanco had conspired against him. Hmmm, we may have to invade. It should not be that hard, as their main military commander has already abdicated and 15% of his troops have deserted. And we already have troops there, yeah they arrived a week after Katrina. Besides, I think the people would welcome U.S. forces as liberators. Hey, maybe we could get them to take the same deal we offered to the folks in Bagdad. Of course you know they would have to adopt a constitution, they have funny ideas about the law down there; I heard they rely on Napoleon or some other dead dictator for their code of justice. What's more they call their counties "parishes." We may be dealing with some sort of entrenched clerical ideaology of hard liners. I also heard that there is a religous minority of Baptists who live in the northen part of the state; do you think they might get angry and send out squads of suicide pirogue bombers to disrupt efforts to rebuild?
I don't know boys, it looks like a mess to me, better off just cutting the whole dam state loose and let them get on their own way, we need them, but we don't need the oil that much, we got Iraq. Emmett Dwyer, Trenton NJ -home of the Brookly Bridge and the place that Washington marched to the night he crossed the Delaware
Posted by: Emmett Dwyer | Sep 29, 2005 3:58:33 PM
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'Commentary and analysis on each week's most controversial issue from washingtonpost.com. Visit www.washingtonpost.com/opinions.
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Can You Marginalize a Majority?
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In a move to preempt the antiwar protesters converging on Washington this weekend, President Bush yesterday put forth the following equation: Withdrawing from Iraq equals letting the terrorists win equals more 9/11s.
The White House's goal is to cast anybody who supports a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq as sadly delusional, reckless and not to be taken seriously.
But Bush may be in trouble here, because he's trying to marginalize a majority.
A recent Gallup Poll , for instance, found that 63 percent of Americans -- almost two out of three -- support the immediate partial or complete withdrawal of U.S. troops. Fewer than one in three Americans support Bush's handling of the war.
The White House, so aware of the power of staying on message, can take some solace from the fact that the antiwar movement is deeply conflicted, lacks clear leadership, and is being kept at arm's length by many top Democrats.
And yet slowly but surely, at least one consistent theme is emerging from the silent majority. And it is a theme that has the potential to neutralize, if not upend, Bush's central message.
That theme: Staying doesn't make things better, it makes things worse.
Here is the text of Bush's remarks at the Pentagon yesterday. He read from a prepared text, flanked by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers. Also nearby were counselor Dan Bartlett, national security adviser Steve Hadley, homeland security adviser Frances Townsend, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and senior political adviser Karl Rove.
"Listen, there are differences of opinion about the way forward; I understand that," Bush said. "Some Americans want us to withdraw our troops so that we can escape the violence. I recognize their good intentions, but their position is wrong. Withdrawing our troops would make the world more dangerous, and make America less safe. To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists saw our response to the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings in the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves, and so they attacked us.
"Now the terrorists are testing our will and resolve in Iraq. If we fail that test, the consequences for the safety and security of the American people would be enormous. Our withdrawal from Iraq would allow the terrorists to claim an historic victory over the United States. It would leave our enemies emboldened and allow men like Zarqawi and bin Laden to dominate the Middle East and launch more attacks on America and other free nations. The battle lines are drawn, and there is no middle ground: either we defeat the terrorists and help the Iraqis build a working democracy, or the terrorists will impose their dark ideology on the Iraqi people and make that country a source of terror and instability to come for decades.
"The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission. For the security of the American people, that's not going to happen on my watch. We'll do our duty. We'll defeat our enemies in Iraq and other fronts in the war on terror. We'll lay the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren."
Judy Keen writes in USA Today: "President Bush won't be in town for this weekend's anti-war demonstrations, but he had an early rebuttal Thursday for protesters' demands that U.S. troops be withdrawn from Iraq."
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In a move to preempt the antiwar protesters converging on Washington this weekend, President Bush yesterday put forth the following equation: Withdrawing from Iraq equals letting the terrorists win equals more 9/11s. Here is the text of Bush's remarks at the Pentagon yesterday. He read...... Lloyd...
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Rita Lands Weakened Punch
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LAKE CHARLES, La., Sept. 24 -- Hurricane Rita, packing 120-mph winds and torrential rains, bulldozed up the Texas-Louisiana corridor Saturday, leaving scarred countryside and mugged towns in its wake, but apparently causing little loss of life.
Rita's footsteps left behind upturned trees, snapped utility poles and rising floodwaters as skirts of rain soaked low-lying areas. Satellite dishes, ripped from their moorings, skittered along rain-slicked highways like errant hockey pucks.
Survival in this vast region of bayous, piney woods, petrochemical plants and urban sprawl owed itself both to luck -- Rita came ashore in a relatively unpopulated area -- and to the fearsome example set by Hurricane Katrina, the storm that killed more than 1,000 people when it ripped through New Orleans and Mississippi's Gulf Coast less than four weeks ago.
Chastened by Katrina memories, more than 3 million Texans and large numbers of Louisianans evacuated Houston, Galveston and dozens of smaller settlements in one of the biggest -- and fastest -- internal migrations in U.S. history, leaving Rita to howl its way through ghost towns.
"Everybody left," said Jason Stagg, 34, working with a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries boat crew in this battered Gulf Coast port town and tourist destination, near which the eye of the hurricane passed just before dawn. "We haven't had to rescue anyone."
Fears of renewed tragedy rose in New Orleans when hastily repaired levees breached during Katrina fell apart again during Rita's first surge Friday, once again flooding parts of New Orleans's Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish.
But no further damage was reported, and the Army Corps of Engineers worked to plug the new gaps Saturday, rolling large boulders into the breaches on either side of the Industrial Canal, then sending Chinook helicopters to drop 3,000-pound bags of sand into the stricken dikes.
Still, engineers kept a careful eye on Lake Pontchartrain, which had risen four feet above the water levels inside the city's flood walls and levees. Ben Morris, the mayor of Slidell, a small community on the lake's eastern end, warned on local television that the lake could spill into low-lying neighborhoods.
By late Saturday the virtue of the mass exodus in Texas was fast becoming a vice. People wanted to come home, and they were ignoring Gov. Rick Perry's admonition "that if you're in a safe place, with food, water and bedding, you're better off staying in place. Now is no time for Texans to let their guard down."
Instead, motorists flooded the highways, destined for largely undamaged Houston and Galveston. Steve McCraw, Texas director of homeland security, pleaded with evacuees to get off the roads so state police could help Rita victims at the Louisiana border and beyond, instead of remaining behind to unsnarl traffic jams.
"We know that no one has lost his life, which is good news -- the objective today is immediate response," said Jack Colley, Texas coordinator for the Governor's Division of Emergency Management. "That's medical assessment, food, water, ice and communications -- making contact with local officials and reestablishing continuity of government."
Late Saturday, Rita was downgraded to a tropical depression and was 40 miles north of Shreveport, La.
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Hurricane Rita stormed into Texas and Louisiana at 3:30 a.m Saturday, with relentless winds, sheets of rain and battering waves that flooded coastal communities, uprooted trees and tore apart numerous buildings.
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President Struggles to Regain His Pre-Hurricane Swagger
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Sept. 23 -- President Bush flew here ahead of Hurricane Rita on Friday to show command of a federal disaster response effort that even supporters acknowledge he fumbled three weeks ago.
The president said he wanted to see the emergency response system from the ground floor at U.S. Northern Command headquarters. "I need to understand how it works better," he told reporters before leaving Washington. But Bush was also embarking on a broader, and possibly more important, mission: restoring strength and confidence in his presidency.
A president who roamed across the national and world stages with an unshakable self-assurance that comforted Republicans and confounded critics since 2001 suddenly finds himself struggling to reclaim his swagger. Bush's standing with the public -- and within the Republican Party -- has been battered by a failed Social Security campaign, violence in Iraq, and most recently Hurricane Katrina. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, have never been lower.
A president who normally thrives on tough talk and self-assurance finds himself at what aides privately describe as a low point in office, one that is changing the psychic and political aura of the White House, as well as its distinctive political approach.
In small, sometimes subtle but unmistakable ways, the president and top aides sound less certain, more conciliatory and willing to do something they avoided in the first term: admit mistakes. After bulling through crisis after crisis with a "bring 'em on" brashness, a more solemn Bush now has twice taken responsibility for the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.
Aides who never betrayed self-doubt now talk in private of failures selling the American people on the Iraq war, the president's Social Security plan and his response to Hurricane Katrina. The president who once told the United Nations it would drift into irrelevancy if it did not back the invasion of Iraq last week praised the world body and said the world works better "when we act together." A White House team that operated on its terms since 2000 is reaching to outside experts for answers like never before.
"I think they are showing a greater willingness to look for new suggestions, new ideas, new approaches than at any time in the presidency," said former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). "I think they realize the larger system has failed: They are not where they want to be on Iraq; the first week after Katrina was an absolute failure."
David Gergen, who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents going back to the 1970s, said that "there is no question [Bush and his advisers] changed their tone. . . . That is a chastened White House talking."
Some White House aides agree the president has changed his pitch since Katrina but said it reflects the nature of the challenges confronting Bush, not a loss in confidence or a policy shift. "It's a different tone," said Michael J. Gerson, the president's strategic adviser who helped speechwriter William McGurn draft the Katrina address. "That was not a strategic or tonal calculation. This was the president himself not being satisfied with the response."
White House aides see Rita as a chance to regain whatever was lost by Katrina, and they have gone out of their way to make sure the government is on a war footing for the arrival of Rita. But the effort got off to a bumpy start Friday. Shortly after Bush told reporters a planned trip to San Antonio to visit with search-and-rescue teams was not a publicity stunt and would not interfere with emergency response efforts on the ground, he was forced to scrub the event because the workers needed to ship out early. "We didn't want to slow up that decision in any way," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The president has cleared much of his schedule to focus on rebuilding the states devastated by Katrina and prepare for the wrath of Rita. Despite grumbling among conservatives, Bush said he will spend whatever it takes to put Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama back together, and he has told aides he will do the same for Rita's victims. There are private talks of tearing up Bush's agenda to change the second-term focus to the poor and preventing future disasters.
Most of all, White House aides want to reestablish Bush's swagger -- the projection of competence and confidence in the White House that has carried the administration through tough times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bush likes to say his job is to make tough decisions and leave the hand-wringing for historians and pundits. He almost never entertains public doubt, which is part of the White House design to build a more powerful presidency. The term "strong leader" appears in at least 98 speeches he has given during his White House years, according to a database search, and was the subtext of his 2004 campaign strategy. He favors provocative language, declaring that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and taunting Iraqi insurgents to "bring 'em on."
He projects this in nonverbal ways as well, the arms-swinging gait of his walk, the glint in his glare, the college boy grin that flashes even in sober moments. Some advisers consider this supreme self-confidence a secret to Bush's success enacting his first-term agenda and winning reelection in a tough political climate. It reinforced Bush's image as a decisive leader, which was an important attribute in an election colored by the threat of terrorism, and helped calm congressional Republicans who disagreed with some of the president's ideas but were won over by the force of his style.
The confidence was contagious, with White House officials and Republicans in Congress as certain as the president himself in what Bush was doing. But over the course of six months, a growing number of Republicans inside and out of the White House have noticed an administration less sure-footed and slower to react to the political environment surrounding them.
A top Republican close to the White House since the earliest days said the absence of a "reelection target" and pressure from first lady Laura Bush and others to soften his second-term tone conspired to temper Bush's swagger well before Katrina hit. "A reelection campaign was always the driving principle to force them to get things together," said the GOP operative, who would speak candidly about Bush only if his name was not used. He said the "brilliance of this team" was always overstated. "Part of the reason they looked so good is Democrats were so discombobulated." Since the election, this official said, White House aides reported that Laura Bush was among those counseling Bush to change his cowboy image during the final four years.
William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said the psychological turnabout started with the failed Social Security campaign, billed as the number one domestic priority six months ago. "The negative effect of the Social Security [campaign] is underestimated," Kristol said. "Once you make that kind of mistake, people tend to be less deferential to your decisions." This coincided with a growing number of Republicans losing faith in Bush's war plan, as Republicans such as Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) openly questioned the president's strategy.
In a series of private conversations over the past few months, aides began second-guessing how they handled the Social Security debate, managed the public perception of the Iraq war and, most recently, the response to Katrina. The federal CIA leak investigation, which has forced Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and others to testify before a grand jury, seemed to distract officials and left a general feeling of unease, two aides said. Aides were calling reporters to find out what was happening with Rove and the investigation. "Nobody knows what's going to happen with the probe," one senior aide said.
The result, say some Republicans, has been a president and White House team that has not been as effective, efficient and sure-footed running government as it was running for reelection. "The shift from campaigning to governing has perhaps not been as quick as everybody hoped," Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said.
The most immediate consequence of the new governing reality for Bush is the growing number of Republicans shedding their fear of publicly challenging the White House. Consider Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). The conservative senator, a Bush loyalist from day one, in the past week has suggested Bush might be a political liability for him in Pennsylvania and then told a local newspaper that the White House botched the Social Security effort. At private meeting on Capitol Hill this week, John Fund, a conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) and others complained about a White House that seems sluggish and way off its game, participants said.
Still, Bush's allies said any stumbles are anomalies and changes in tones momentary. They note, for instance, that the administration is still winning political victories, such as the likely confirmation of the president's nominee for chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr.
"You adapt to the circumstances and the circumstances are different," said Mark McKinnon, Bush's political consultant and friend. But he added he detected no loss of confidence within the Bush team. "I get zero sense of that. This is an administration and a president that are like the Marines -- they're used to taking the beach, they're used to getting shelled. But they dig in and they do their jobs."
McKinnon said if anything Bush thrives under the pressure. "I've never seen the president burdened by the presidency," he said. "He's built to deal with really big events. It's in his DNA."
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Latest politics news headlines from Washington DC. Follow 2004 elections, campaigns, Democrats, Republicans, political cartoons, opinions from The Washington Post. Features government policy, government tech, political analysis and reports.
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'It Was Like the End of the World,' One Texan Says
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HOUSTON, Sept. 23 -- With Rita closing in, the family of Albert Ruben Sr. drove here this morning to a high school basketball auditorium turned hurricane shelter of last resort -- after taking the most maddening journey of their lives.
In a caravan of 20 cars, the Ruben family and their neighbors in the coastal town of Texas City had tried to obey the state's mandatory hurricane evacuation order. With full gas tanks, food and water, they left on a designated evacuation highway on Wednesday at 11:30 p.m., hoping to beat the rush and avoid the heat.
Seventeen hours later, they had traveled just 60 miles and were stuck in traffic. They had driven most of that time -- in daytime temperatures of about 100 degrees -- without air conditioning to save fuel. All public services along the evacuation route -- for gasoline, food, water, bathrooms -- were closed.
Ruben, 50, a juvenile-detention officer in Galveston County, said he saw three ambulances carry away elderly people who had collapsed in the heat of their unmoving cars. His grandchildren, 4 and 7, had put on baby diapers to avoid soiling the car.
"It was like the end of the world," Ruben said. "You know what it makes you want to do? It makes you want to go home and die. The government done us wrong."
Ruben and most of his family gave up on the evacuation by Thursday afternoon and drove back home to Texas City for the night, having wasted most of their gas. Other family members, including his wife's mother, decided to soldier on in the traffic and head north. Ruben said he has not heard from them and does not know where they are.
On Friday morning, of course, Rita was still coming and the Ruben family had to do something.
Ten members of the family got back in their cars -- taking along the sandwiches they had not eaten on their earlier drive to nowhere -- and went to Milby High School in southeastern Houston. Ruben's daughter, Anitra Esther, a nurse, had been on the phone with the police and had been told that the high school would be a shelter.
They arrived around 8 a.m. Friday at the high school. Police standing out front told them it was full and suggested that they drive to a nearby high school basketball auditorium called Barnett Field House. (Police at Milby later told a reporter that the plan for a shelter at the school was canceled because the school has a tendency to flood in heavy rains.) When the Ruben family found the field house, which seats 3,200 for basketball game, it was just opening as a shelter. It offered bathrooms and water but no food, diapers or medicine.
Houston Mayor Bill White made it clear in repeated interviews this week that he did not want city residents to look to city shelters as a primary option for riding out the hurricane. The much-publicized chaos, violence and despair at the Superdome and the Convention Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina convinced Houston officials that they must find a better way, several police officials said.
"We are not encouraging the general public to go into the streets looking for shelter," White said Friday morning at a televised news conference. Later in the day, he emphasized that the Astrodome and the convention center here "are not shelters." The mayor also said that "most folks are better off in their homes."
The mayor even declined to name a shelter where people might go, saying that the police and emergency people will open shelters "without announcements to the general public."
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Senior Citizens From Houston Die When Bus Catches Fire
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HOUSTON, Sept. 23 -- By the time the first officers arrived, it was too late.
The initial 911 call had been about a bus emitting flames, but those flames quickly became an inferno that consumed 24 elderly people who were being evacuated from their nursing home as this city prepared for Hurricane Rita.
Trapped by their infirmities and surrounded by flames, the residents of a facility called Brighton Gardens cried out for help in their broken down bus on Interstate 45 near Dallas, but rescuers could not reach them. Three Dallas County deputy sheriffs and a local police officer could not get past the second-level step of the bus when they arrived at 6:09 a.m.
"One deputy felt the blast furnace of flames and smelled the black acrid smoke, and he could hear them. He shined his flashlight in and said, 'Please come forward to the light. I can't get to you,' " said Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz. "Then there was a number of small explosions, and he was forced to come back off the bus."
Authorities said they believe the explosions came when some of the residents' oxygen tanks ignited.
The Brighton Gardens residents were the first of Rita's victims, dying a full 24 hours before the hurricane was to make landfall. They were among 39 residents on the bus; the 15 others were taken to Dallas hospitals. The bus driver and six nursing home employees aboard survived.
Brighton Gardens is a 140-bed assisted living and skilled nursing facility in Bellaire, a Houston suburb. It is owned by Sunrise Senior Living Inc. of McLean.
"Sunrise has been devastated by this tragedy," said Paul J. Klaassen, company chairman and chief executive officer. "Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the residents involved in this unfortunate incident. Our primary concern is for the safety of our residents, and we are shocked and saddened that this event occurred during our evacuation."
Brighton Gardens administrators began the evacuation Thursday.
Families picked up most of the residents, but two busloads of residents and staff members were dispatched to sister facilities in Dallas. One bus arrived safely early Friday. The second bus, which left Thursday night, broke down on I-45, about 20 miles south of Dallas. The driver managed to pull the vehicle onto the shoulder of the northbound lanes, to free up a lane surrounded by a sea of vehicles carrying evacuees out of Houston for as far as the eye could see.
Callers to 911 reported seeing flames coming out of the rear of the bus.
"There was heavy smoke and a lot of confusion and very elderly persons laying on the roadway -- eighties, mid-eighties, nineties," Peritz said.
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Report: U.S. Image in Bad Shape
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As Karen Hughes, longtime presidential adviser and new public diplomacy guru at the State Department, prepares to leave this weekend on a "listening tour" of the Middle East, a congressionally mandated advisory panel to the department warned that "America's image and reputation abroad could hardly be worse."
The panel's report, which has been seen by senior officials but not yet officially released, said a fact-finding mission to the Middle East last year found that "there is deep and abiding anger toward U.S. policies and actions." The Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy cited polling that found that large majorities in Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia "view George W. Bush as a greater threat to the world order than Osama bin Laden."
The report warned that televised images of U.S. policy choices -- such as in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the invasion of Iraq -- reverberate across the Arab media and will "long haunt the image of the United States." The committee recommended a series of steps, including increased funding and staffing, to rebuild efforts to promote U.S. culture and ideas -- an essential task that it said has been eroded through bureaucratic shuffling and indifference.
In much of the world, the report said, the United States is viewed as "less a beacon of hope than a dangerous force to be countered."
The advisory committee was created by Congress in 2004 and charged with advising the secretary of state on how to advance the use of cultural diplomacy in U.S. foreign policy. Patricia de Stacy Harrison, at the time an assistant secretary of state, was appointed chairman. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell named F. William Smullen III, his former chief of staff, as a member. Congress selected seven other members for their expertise in cultural, educational and communications issues.
In her maiden overseas trip since being confirmed as undersecretary of state, Hughes is to visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said improving the U.S. image abroad is one of her top priorities; her success in recruiting President Bush's longtime confidante to spearhead the effort is seen by many in Washington as a coup.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday that Hughes is "going to be starting a conversation with the rest of the world." He said that she will be "listening" on the trip, "and in listening, she will also be trying to explain our policies and laying the foundation for the coming years, in terms of our public diplomacy efforts."
But analysts said yesterday that Hughes will face real challenges. Not only are U.S. policies in the Arab world scorned, but the administration's promotion of democracy while supporting autocratic governments is seen as hypocritical, and visa restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have caused anger and resentment.
"Straight talking will work, but sweet talking won't," said James J. Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute. "This is not about feigning sincerity; it's about responding to concerns. We are in a hole too deep."
Radwan A. Masmoudi, president of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, said that, on a recent trip to the region, he found that the level of anti-Americanism is "10 times what it was just a year ago." He attributed the shift to the war in Iraq and the feeling that the United States is not serious about promoting democracy because it does not confront countries such as Egypt over its political prisoners.
Rami G. Khouri of the Daily Star in Beirut wrote in a commentary last week that Hughes's efforts have promise "but I fear if some early distortions, gaps and misguided operating principles are not quickly amended, she and her efforts could turn out to be another howling waste of time and money."
Edward P. Djerejian, who chaired a 2003 panel that recommended changes in public diplomacy efforts, said his committee determined that 80 percent of the perception of the United States overseas was determined by policy choices and feelings about U.S. values. The other 20 percent, he said, could be affected by public diplomacy efforts, a margin that he noted could be a "critical factor for the struggle for ideas."
Djerejian has been assisting Hughes in drafting a strategy for her job. The plan, he said, draws on recommendations in his committee's report, including the creation of rapid-response teams to counter rumors.
"It is clear the American brand has been badly damaged," Smullen said. "I'm not suggesting we have to change our policy, but we do need to take an assessment of the attitudes toward us by people around the world."
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Rita Brings New Wave of Net Profiteering
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In a spree mirroring the online gold rush that accompanied Hurricane Katrina's landfall and aftermath, online speculators are scooping up hundreds of Hurricane Rita-related Web domain names, and Rita-themed Internet auctions have begun in earnest.
The quick proliferation of questionable activities has spurred the federal government into partnering with Internet service providers, computer security companies and anti-spam groups to shut down and prosecute owners of fraudulent sites, according to several participants in the ad-hoc task force.
Tom Liston, a security consultant with Washington-based Intelguardians.com and an incident handler with the SANS Internet Storm Center, worked with ISPs and law enforcement officials to shut down more than 40 Web sites falsely claiming to raise money to benefit relief organizations helping Hurricane Katrina victims.
Liston began tracking new Web site registrations containing the word "Rita" on Monday. So far, he has found more than 1,100 such sites, and he estimates that a fair number of them will be converted for use in Rita-related fundraising schemes in the coming weeks.
On Thursday, someone began auctioning off a burnt piece of toast with the meteorological symbol for a hurricane and the word "Rita" scraped onto it, promising to donate 40 percent of the final auction price to storm victims. EBay shut down the auction later that day.
Several Rita-related domain names are also for sale on eBay, including one for RitaAid.net that starts the bidding at $10,000. The auction does not claim that any of the proceeds will go to benefit relief efforts.
"I expect we're going to probably see just as many attempts at fraud with Rita as we did with Katrina, and the fact that both of these hurricanes hit at the same time is going to increase amount of scams out there," Liston said. "Because [the hurricane] is such a newsworthy issue and people constantly have this in front of them, unfortunately that's going to help these low-lifes out there to succeed in what they're doing."
Many of the fraudulent Web sites set up after Katrina were not advertised through spam but through online newsgroup postings and other methods less likely to catch the attention of fraud watchers, said Richard Cox, chief information officer for the Spamhaus Project, a junk e-mail fighting group.
Organizations who said they were members of the ad-hoc Rita task force working with the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Response Center, or US-CERT, include: the SANS Internet Storm Center, the Spamhaus Project, the Anti-Phishing Working Group and San Diego-based Internet security firm Websense Inc.
Officials from the Homeland Security Department did not respond to interview requests for this story.
In Katrina's aftermath, scam artists erected dozens of Web sites asking for PayPal donations but offering little or no information about what they planned to do with the money. As the massive storm neared landfall, registrations of new Internet domain names containing the name "Katrina" skyrocketed, and hundreds of Katrina-related auctions emerged on Ebay that flouted the auction giant's charitable giving rules.
Virus writers also took advantage of public attention to the disaster by e-mailing virus-laden attachments posing as photographs of the storm's devastation.
The scams prompted U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to outline a series of anti-fraud priorities for the FBI and the Justice Department. State attorneys general in Florida and Missouri also sued people who were fraudulently accepting donations for hurricane victims.
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In a spree mirroring the online gold rush that accompanied Hurricane Katrina's landfall and aftermath, online speculators are scooping up hundreds of Hurricane Rita-related Web domain names, and Rita-themed Internet auctions have begun in earnest.
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FDA Commissioner Steps Down After Rocky Two-Month Tenure
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Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford announced his resignation yesterday, just two months after he was confirmed for the job. His e-mail notice to the FDA staff gave no reason for his surprise decision to step down.
Sources familiar with his departure said Crawford was asked to resign, though it was unclear why. Crawford has had a stormy tenure at the agency, which has been beset by criticism from both the left and the right over its actions regarding drug safety and emergency contraception.
He was also accused before his confirmation of having an improper relationship with a female colleague -- a charge that independent investigators said both parties denied. The final report did note, however, significant discrepancies between Crawford's testimony and that of others in the commissioner's office.
Within an hour of the resignation, the White House announced that President Bush had asked National Cancer Institute Director Andrew von Eschenbach to serve as acting agency commissioner, and said he would take over the agency immediately.
Crawford, an affable Georgian who has worked at the agency on four occasions over 30 years, explained his departure yesterday by saying: "After three and a half years as Deputy Commissioner, Acting Commissioner and, finally, as Commissioner, it is time at the age of 67, to step aside."
A spokeswoman for Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who helped guide Crawford through his nomination, said Leavitt accepted the resignation "with sadness." Asked why Crawford had resigned, HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson said she could not discuss a "personnel matter."
Crawford is the second high-ranking administration official to resign in the past two weeks. Michael D. Brown resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under pressure because of the agency's performance during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Under Crawford's leadership, the agency has been accused of being lax in its safety requirements after the discovery a year ago that the popular arthritis painkiller Vioxx increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The agency has also been buffeted by abortion politics over a proposal to make emergency contraception more easily available.
Crawford announced last month that the agency had delayed, once again, its decision on whether the "morning-after pill," Plan B, would be available without a prescription. An agency expert advisory panel overwhelmingly recommended in 2003 that the application be approved, but the agency on three occasions said the proposal was either unacceptable or incomplete.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) complained that Crawford's latest Plan B decision broke a promise made to them that the issue would be resolved by Sept. 1. On the basis of that promise, the two lifted holds they had placed on Crawford's Senate confirmation vote.
Clinton and Murray yesterday welcomed Crawford's departure.
"With the resignation of Dr. Crawford, the FDA has a real opportunity to restore its battered reputation and nominate a leader with vision and drive to ensure that the FDA upholds its gold standard of drug regulation," Clinton said in a statement.
After reading a scathing statement about the FDA and Crawford's leadership on the Senate floor last week, Murray succeeded in persuading colleagues to include language in the agency's final appropriations bill expressing congressional concern over the direction of the FDA and a call for an expedited decision on Plan B.
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a vocal critic of FDA policies and Crawford, welcomed yesterday's departure as well, and said he hopes the new commissioner will reform the agency and take it in a new and more consumer-oriented direction. "FDA scientists and employees are by and large hardworking and committed to fulfilling the agency's mission," he said. "They deserve a commissioner who will reinvigorate the agency."
Crawford, who trained in veterinary medicine and pharmacology, was generally popular with leaders of the pharmaceutical industry, as well as those involved with food safety. Yesterday, he presented his most important accomplishments as efforts to speed drug development, to introduce new drug safety measures, and to bring additional money to the agency through manufacturer-paid fees.
Crawford spoke Monday morning in Washington at a conference sponsored by the Consumer Federation of America, outlining the FDA's plans over the next few months for deciding whether cloned animals should be allowed into the food supply. He told jokes and fielded questions on several issues, offering no hint that his tenure would be over before the week was out.
Von Eschenbach, the new acting commissioner, is a surgeon and cancer survivor from Texas. Since coming to the National Cancer Institute from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, he has won both friends and critics for his professed goal of making cancer a chronic disease that patients can live with, rather than a fatal disease, by 2015. Many oncologists have criticized von Eschenbach for promising more than the science will likely be able to deliver.
Staff writer Justin Gillis contributed to this report.
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Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford announced his resignation yesterday, just two months after he was confirmed for the job. His e-mail notice to the FDA staff gave no reason for his surprise decision to step down.
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Happynews.com, Where the Beat Is Always Up
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The news menu was stuffed with the dreadful and appalling yesterday. A massive hurricane bearing down on Texas. A bus fire killing 24 elderly people near Dallas. Floods ravaging New Orleans -- again. And that was before you even considered what's happening to the economy, or in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else in this sad, wicked world.
You see any happy news out there?
As it happens, the people who produce Happynews.com did. There it was, right at the top of their Web site, bordered by a sunny yellow frame and adorned with smiley faces: "Hurricane Rita still weakening."
And: "Majority to back Algerian peace plan."
And: "Indonesia takes steps to prevent bird flu."
Happynews.com, started three months ago, covers many of the international, national, sports and entertainment stories that the big guys do. But as the name implies, it doesn't cover them the same way. Happynews doesn't do bummers: no death, no destruction, no shocking Lindsay Lohan weight-loss updates. Which is to say, it doesn't do the kinds of stories that have come to define the contemporary concept of "news."
Unlike the media's bad news bearers, Happynews's glass is always at least half-full, and sometimes it bubbles right over. It is Prozac for the eyes: "India proposes free school for one-girl families," it declared brightly yesterday. A typical story from its international section might be "Food Aid to Niger Increases," while its sports section includes the likes of "Long-distance swimmer conquers Great Lakes."
In other words, not man-bites-dog. More like man-scratches-dog's-tummy.
World-weary journalists may scoff, but Happynews founder and publisher Byron Reese says his Web site's take on the world may be more representative than what he sees in the newspaper or on TV. "I think the news media should give people an accurate view of reality," says Reese, 36, an Internet entrepreneur who lives in Austin. "What the media gives us now is not an accurate view. It's distorted. I don't want to sound like a media basher, because I'm not, but news organizations tend to report what people want and what they'll buy."
In fact, Reese says, good news has been trumping bad for some time: "We've cured childhood diseases, ended legal segregation, lengthened the average lifespan and improved the quality of life for millions of people." Murder rates have been declining for years, he adds, yet the number of stories on network newscasts about murders has soared.
Hence, Happynews, whose credo reads: "We believe virtue, goodwill and heroism are hot news. That's why we bring you up-to-the-minute news, geared to lift spirits and inspire lives."
Each day, the site's staff of 10 full- and part-time employees scours news wires and press releases for the good stuff. They also edit contributions from about 100 "citizen journalists" around the world who offer their own upbeat stories.
Not everything on Happynews qualifies as unalloyed happy news, however. "Enrollment up at conservative colleges," for example, might be good news to conservatives and conservative colleges, but try telling that to campus lefties. Similarly, New York Yankee fans might find no joy in this headline: "Manny Ramirez [of the Boston Red Sox] named AL Player of the Week."
Reese concedes that those stories shouldn't have made the cut. As a rule, he says, the site avoids covering sporting events and politics -- or anything likely to create winners and losers. The criteria for a story are threefold: Is it truthful? Is it interesting? Is it something that almost everyone on Happynews's staff can agree is "positive"?
So far, Happynews seems to have struck a chord. Reese says the site got 70,000 unique visitors in its first full month of operation in August and traffic has been building since then. (He makes no linkage to the onslaught of bad news lately). He's also seeing something he's never seen in his years creating Web sites: Daily fan mail. Which, of course, makes him happy.
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Talk About Travel
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The Post's Travel Section Flight Crew will take your comments, questions, suspicions, warnings, gripes, sad tales and happy endings springing from the world of... the world. Of course, the Flight Crew will be happy to answer your travel questions -- but the best thing about this forum, we insist, is that it lets travelers exchange information with other travelers who've been there, done that or otherwise have insights, ideas and information to share. Different members of the Crew will rotate through the captain's chair every week, but the one constant is you, our valued passengers.
We know you have a choice in online travel forums, and speaking for the entire Flight Crew, we want to thank you for flying with us.
You may also browse an archive of previous live travel discussions.
Did you have travel plans to the Gulf coast? Check out our
Gary Lee: Two Corrections to the minutes from Gary:
1. Carol Sottili is here today.
2. Anne McDonough is the section researcher.
Gary Lee at the helm here. Aside from Steve Hendrix (in Texas reporting on Rita) and Carol Sottili (off today), we have a full crew. It includes: KC Summers, travel section editor, John Deiner, deputy editor, Cindy Loose, staff writer, Andrea Sachs, writer and copy editor, and Anne McDonough, copy editor. We're ready to catch all your travel queries. Aside from your questions, feel free to chime in with thoughts, tips, suggestions, addendums.
With the wreckage of Katrina and Rita to deal with, and other storms possibly in the offing, does anyone have any ideas about what we as travelers can do to assist?
Has anyone particpated in or does anyone know about good volunteer relief opportunities available to travelers? Anyone have any tips on some large or just everyday things that motivated travelers can do their part to help a part of the country in need.
The best tip, idea, or anecdote gets a capitivating coffee table book by John Annerino about the Grand Canyon.
Gary Lee: Carol Sottili is here!
Washington, DC: Hello, I have seen some poor references made in previous discussions about Miami airport. I am flying to Punta Cana in December and the only decent flights I could get go through Miami. Both ways I have about one and a half hours between flights. I have never traveled through Miami and I have never traveled out of the country. What exactly are the problems that people have with going through Miami and what are the best ways I can avoid them since I can't change the flights now? Thanks
Gary Lee: Other travelers have mentioned that 1) the security staff can be nonchalant 2) the airport is spread out and often requires very long walks between flights and 3) the gate agents are not always the most efficient.
Anyone with gripes to share about MIA?
New York, N.Y.: I hope you travel gurus can help me out here. I'm attending a conference in College Park, Md., and flying back to NYC on a Friday afternoon (ideally around 4:30 p.m.). If you had your choice would you take a cab to BWI or National at that time of day? Thanks!
John Deiner: 'Afternoon. Given my druthers (What are druthers, anyhow? And are they good for you?), I'd avoid driving to an airport at that time of day, particularly on a Friday. If you can, take a cab to a Metro station (maybe the Greenbelt station) and go to National that way. But given the choice between those two evils, I'd pick BWI, because the traffic may not be so bad then, and a smart cabbie may be able to jump off I-95 or the BW Parkway and go a back way.
It's up to you, New York, New York.
Passport: Read (quickly, so I might have missed it) the passport section: did you mention where in the city one can get passport photos made, (or, nowadays, can I take a picture, crop it and submit it)?
Anne McDonough: Coming up should be a link to a passport photo comparison we did last year that lists 5 places in downtown DC to get your photos taken. Ritz Camera, for one, has locations all over the place. You can't just take your own picture--the rules are pretty specific. And if you're getting an infant's photo taken, call ahead to see if the location can accommodate you; not all are set up to photograph infants.
washingtonpost.com: Passport Photos 101 (pdf file)
Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C.: How will the US Airways/America West merger effect the current US Airways/United codeshare agreement?
Also, will the new US Airways continue to offer service to European destinations? I found some of their best in-flight experiences to be on their trans-Atlantic flights. Thanks.
Carol Sottili: I don't believe there are any plans to end the US Airways/United code share arrangement. And the airline has not announced any plans to discontinue its Europe service.
Boston, Mass.: I am currently booked to fly home to DC for Thanksgiving on Independence Air. Since booking the flight, I've been hearing lost of ominous reports of the airline going under. I've also heard that if an airline goes out of business, thereby cancelling your flight, that another airline is obligated to give you a seat on one of their planes for $25. Is this true? If so, how do you go about claiming a seat an another airline. Just give them a call? I want to make sure I'm prepared...
Cindy Loose: Independence is talking bankruptcy, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll disappear, or disapper by Thanksgiving. Too hard to say for anyone right now. The airline has cut some of its costly coast to coast routes and is trying to make things work despite incredibly high jet fuel costs.
So, no crystal ball. But yes, there is a temporary law that was extended that requires other carriers to take you on a "seat available" basis. Over Thanksgiving, not many seats are available--there is the rub. But there are so many flights between Boston and New York that I'd think you'd find someone with a seat available, esp. if you're willing to fly into any of the three metro area airports.
At any rate, there isn't anything you can do about it now, or as long as Independence is still up and running.
Alexandria, Va.: Just a small addition to your listing of Greyhound stations in this area, both are very convenient for suburban Virginia:
Springfield, with some buses that bypass Washington headed north. At the same location as the Franconia/Springfield Metro and VRE stations.
6770 FRONTIER DR, Springfield, VA 22150
Woodbridge, at the same location as the Woodbridge VRE.
1040 EXPRESS WAY RD, Woodbridge, VA 22191
Also with regard to Amtrak service: There are full service suburban stations with ticket offices, etc. in Alexandria (which also has baggage checking), by the King Street Metro; in New Carrolton, adjoining the New Carrolton Metro; and at BWI Airport. Also there are more limited stops (few trains and/or single routes, no staffing) at Rockville, Mannassas, Woodbridge, and Springfield.
John Deiner: Thanks, Al, for the good info.
VBT bike tours?: has anyone here gone on one? I just got their 2006 catalogue in the mail and am soooooooo tempted. May, Tuscany, biking past castles and flower fields... wine and food and cute guys to boot.
Gary Lee: Is this the same company as Bike Vermont. If so, I had a great trip with them a couple of years back in Vermont. Very casual but at the same time, well organized.
Arlington, Va: I read about Independence reducing thier schedule. I have three trips scheduled with them over the next 3 months. Will they be there for me when I'm trying to get home after Christmas? Should I go ahead and buy tickets on other airlines?
Carol Sottili: As Cindy said in an earlier posting, other airlines will take passengers from any airline that goes bankrupt, but over the busy holiday periods, there may not be seats. We don't know whether Independence Air is going to go under, but it's a good idea to do homework now. Keep up on Fly I schedule changes and figure out which other airlines fly to where you're going.
Chicago, Ill: Just got back from a wonderful vacation to Italy. I could ramble for hours about how much we enjoyed it, but one thing which really got in our craw was our return to the States. The red tape and hassle was extraordinary! I've traveled internationally over a dozen times since September 11th, mostly to Europe, and none of the countries, even Turkey, have anything remotely resembling the forms, warnings, suspicions, lines, bureaucracy and general "go away" attitude that you get when you return here. And most of it's pointless window dressing. (Well, at least in O'Hare, LAX and JFK.) I mean in Switzerland, for example, I couldn't even get them to stamp my passport!
I'm wondering about long-term trends. Have you guys have started to see or hear about any noticeable dropoff in foreign visits to the US? Any big backlash? Are other countries picking up some former US-bound travelers, or do people still think it's worth the hassle? And any movement in the federal government to make our customs and immigration (sorry, "border protection" and "homeland security") a little more user-friendly? Thanks.
Cindy Loose: I've not had that experience--pretty smooth sailing. Just get in quick-moving line, hand in little card saying I didn't buy anything but a t-shirt, and get stamped. Just did an office poll and found similar experiences. Maybe we've just been lucky? Or--you don't mention--maybe you're not a U.S. citizen and so your experience is different from ours?
How about those in the audience who've returned through airports into the U.S.---big hassle, or no?
Washington, DC : Hello! Thanks for taking my question. I am heading to NYC for Columbus Day Weekend and am planning on taking a Chinatown bus. Question is, which one to take? I've taken Washington Deluxe in the past with no complaints, but it seems other lines have more pick up and drop off times. Do you or other readers have any suggestions? Thanks!
Andrea Sachs: The buses are mainly indistinguishable, though I have found Washington Deluxe and Vamoose a bit cleaner (plus I like to get dropped off by Madison Square Garden and picked up closer to the Post). But otherwise, you should decide according to schedules and pick up/drop off points. In addition, some buses show movies, others don't---but you never know till your are bus-bound if the video is working. Some also stop in Baltimore, which slows the drive. And on the way back, make sure you are on a bus that goes directly from NYC to DC and has no other pick-ups in the city; that adds so much more time to your trip you might as well just wait for the next bus. Also, buy round trip, for a cheaper fare.
Virginia: Just wanted to give you a source of booking group tours and cruises that I have used: www.affordabletours.com.
They are agents for many of the big companies such as Globus, Trafalger, etc., along with most cruise lines.
They offer good discounts and great service!
Thanks for all of the information in yesterday's Travel Section. I am saving the entire section to use when I next plan to travel.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the tip. Lots of folks, including me, might be able to use those sites.
Arlington, Va.: I saw that one of you went to Croatia recently. I've been twice, both times booking through a travel agent and paying about $900--the first time open-jaw. I've found searching the European low cost carriers confusing (and it seems only Croatian airlines and subsidiaries of Austrian fly into Croatia anyway, right?), plus you often lose travel time with little savings. Can you offer any insights on a cheaper way? Also, did you find any hidden gems or hit the highlights for your first trip?
KC Summers: You could do a *little* cheaper -- I paid about $800 to get to Zagreb earlier this month (consolidator fare, via Lufthansa) and then about $80 more to fly to Dubrovnik on Croatia Air. Like you, I was expecting to fly very cheaply once there on Euro budget carriers, but that doesn't seem to apply in Croatia. YOu could try ferrying over from Italy but then you lose time. Bottom line, Croatia's not that cheap or easy to get to -- but it's so worth it, don't you agree?
Hidden gems -- I really, really liked Zagreb. It's definitely an underrated European capital. Just a real nice vibe, not drab at all, and a great cafe society. The highlights of the country, for me, were Dubrovnik (of course); the gorgeous, laid-back little island of Korcula; and the amazing Diocletian's Palace in Split (another fun surprise). And September's a perfect time to go.
Ashburn, Va. : As I watch Independence Air continue to tread water, I have to wonder if I should book on another airline for a flight to Buffalo at the end of October. Does the flight crew have any feeling one way or another? I saw they are cutting flights to certain destinations from IAD.
Carol Sottili: If Buffalo is not on the chopping block right now, you should be OK for late October, but it's never a bad idea to have alternatives. Southwest goes to Buffalo from BWI, and tickets that are not used can be applied to other flights, as long as they are used within a year, so you could hedge your bets that way (plus it's only $44 each way).
Issues with MIA: My biggest gripe about connecting through MIA is the arrogance and rudeness that too many customs and security officials have towards travelers, especially non-Americans, upon return to the US. You can be thorough and efficient withough being nasty. But there's not too much you can do about it.
But you can review an airport map ahead of time and be sure you pay attention to flight listings and baggage kiosks in the air and as soon as you touch down. That should help since the security staff isn't always as helpful.
Gary Lee: Thanks for your warning. Anyone else have similar or very different experiences?
Portugal Help?: Hi -- am thinking about Portugal in mid to late January. Is that a good time to go? A good time for cheap fares and decent weather? Or am I totally off the mark here?
Gary Lee: I've been in Portugal in January and found the weather surprisingly sunny and warm. Also, airfares in January to there -- or almost anywhere in Europe -- tend to be lowest n January.
Bethesda, Md.: Looking over this weekend's list of specialty travel resources I was a little hurt to see seniors, families, gay, adventure, and pets but not couples. I assure you married people without kids and couples in general do vacation. We'd appreciate a listing of resources (say adults only resorts) for our group. Or are couples so overlooked by the travel industry that there are no resources available?
Anne McDonough: The intention was by no means to insinuate that married people without kids and couples in general don't vacation but I don't think that couples are overlooked by the travel industry: Look at how the single supplement is pretty much a given in all travel industries from booking a cruise to arranging for a hotel room. That's one of the main reasons that solo travelers were addressed as a group in this piece. Having said that, Superclubs, for one, lets you choose "adults-only" when using their vacation finder to search for the right resort. Are there any clickers with adult-only vacation tips?
Thanksgiving Flight Tips?: Any tips for getting the best price on a flight from DC to Orlando on/around Thanksgiving? Just did a quick Travelocity search, departing Thursday morning and coming back Sunday, and . . . OUCH!!!
Cindy Loose: Thanksgiving is the most traveled period of the whole year--bigger than Christmas, bigger than all the president's birthdays and Easter and Fourth of July combined.
I'm afraid there is no hidden secret, except traveling on Thanksgiving Day, or get off work early enough in the week to avoid the crowds. For example---Involved in a business that operates over weekends? Volunteer to work the weekend after Thanksgiving, so you can instead take off Tuesday and Wed. and maybe Monday too, and fly back home right after the pumpking pie on Thursday. Of course that isn't practical for most, but sorry, there is no simple way around the price gouging law of supply and demand.
Washington, DC: Does anyone have any recommendations for where to look for vacation packages to Rio de Janeiro? Looks like it's a lot cheaper to buy a package than to get air and hotel separately, and I want to make sure I'm getting a good deal with a reputable company. Also, is 10 days enough (or too much) to spend in the city, and are there nearby destinations worth checking out for a couple days during the trip? thanks!!
Carol Sottili: Try www.flysouthvacations.com or www.offpeaktraveler.com.
Re: Miami: About a month ago I changed planes in Miami to go to Jamaica. Because of the construction the walk was very long, about 20 minutes and I am a very fit person. There were some signs for elevators etc. but I am not sure what the alternatives are for someone who cannot walk. I woudl also recommend having a ligh, wheeled carry-on. If you have one (or two) heavy over the shoulder bags, your back will be out of alignment when you get to your gate. Also, the gates and directions are not always marked clearly. On the way back, we had 2 hours and I hardly made my flight, I ran the whole terminal, and they shut the door right after I got in. The immigration/customs was a mess, the luggage area was full of unclaimed large size suitcases all over the place so you had to jump over them to get yours, and once we picked our luggage nobody could direct us where to drop it. Plus we had to pass through security again. It was a nightmare!
Gary Lee: Sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for sharing.
Alexandria, Va.: Crotia sounds awesome and I'm starting to plan a visit to the Dalmation coast in May...but what's the best way to get there?
Would it make sense to fly somewhere close and then take a train and a ferry across from Italy so that trael time is actually part of the vacation? If that's too cumbersome, what's the best flight plan from DC?
KC Summers: Another Croatia fan! I chose to fly into Zagreb because I wanted to check out the capital, but yes, it's possible to ferry across the Adriatic from Italy, and bypass the interior. You can fly to Rome, take a train to Bari and then take the overnight ferry to Dubrovnik. Either way it's time-consuming, but I like your attitude about making that part of the journey -- which you can't really say about flying.
Problems with MIA: For the person flying through Miami to Punta Cana. The probblem with the airport in Miami is more on the way back into the country on the way out. When you are traveling to the DR you will not have to go through customs in Miami so 1.5 hours will be okay for changing flights. When you get back from teh DR you have to check in through customs with all of the rest of central and south america and most of the caribbean. There seems to be no order in customs and everyone goes in whatever line they choose. It is slow and if you have a tight layover you can often miss your flight back to DC. Nothing to do about it, and as long as yours is not the last flight of the day to DC you can just wait and take the next flight back. I think the staff in Miami is sued to people missing their connections.
Gary Lee: Good point, thanks
Gary Lee: CLICKSTERS ALERT: FOR THOSE WHO MISSED OUR CHAT INTRO, We asked whether anyone had any tips, experiences or thoughts on how to volunteer to help for hurricane relief. The best answer gets a coffee table book on the Grand Canyon...
For New York, NY in College Park: Wouldn't it be better to take a cab to the College Park station for going to National? Also, www.wmata.com has the times for the BWI shuttle from the Greenbelt station, which is way cheaper than a cab, if that's a consideration. Also, I've noticed that the BWI shuttle drivers have been avoiding the freeway lately, which has made the drive much faster.
John Deiner: DOH! Of course. That's a real cheap option. I sorta got the impression that money wasn't a problem for the clickster, which I can't relate to -- so your solution is a good one!
for College Park/NY: Why not take a cab to the Greenbelt metro (not far from College Park) and take the B30 bus directly to BWI? It only costs $3 and takes 30-40 minutes. Makes more sense than back-tracking to National.
John Deiner: And another vote for the bus. Thanks, guys, for keeping me on my toes.
Re. passports: I've heard that US passports are going to begin having RFID chips in them in the very near future (maybe this autumn?). I need to renew my passport in the next couple months but thought I'd wait until the new technology kicked in. Do you all know anything about the timeline?
Cindy Loose: The RFID chips won't be in passports until next year. Plus, be aware that some countries won't accept passports that are less than six months old. So get your renewal now, and if you're traveling out of the country soon after your old one expires, check to make sure it's not a place that doesn't like new passports at www.travel.state.gov, consular reports by country.
Miami Airport: Miami Intenational sees a lot of International tourists and seems totally unprepared for this. This causes quite a few problems. After we disembarked the plane. We got in one of many lines for US passport holders and were able to quickly procede to baggage claim. There were far fewer lines for non US passport holders. Their lines were very long. So the baggage claim area becomes backed up and this is where the break down occurs. Airport employees go to the carosels and throw bags off them into piles, they keep throwing until more bags can come down the shoot. These employees are not careful with the baggage or where they are throwing it. Truly, it is dangerous. There is no organization and what is left are mountains of luggage. People finally make it to the area and have to scale these baggage mountains searching for their things. It is truly astonishing and I imagine not the best fisrt impression of our country.
Gary Lee: This pretty much concurs with my experiences there. One thing I try to do to help is avoid checking any luggage...
I'm thinking about visiting Ireland at the end of October. I've read the great article in the Post archives waxing poetically about Ireland in the winter, but practically speaking, is it a good idea? I don't mind cold weather, but is it too dark and rainy to make it worth while? If so, what price should I be able to get for flights at that time of year?
KC Summers: I've had good luck in Ireland in mid-November -- only one rainy day, and the rest of the week bright, sunny and cool. Really, you just never know with fall weather, so best be prepared with layers (t-shirts, long-sleeve shirts, sweaters) and a rainproof windbreaker. It does get dark early, but that won't matter when you're in a pub listening to great music and drinking hard apple cider! (Better than Guinness if you ask me.)
You should be able to find something for around $600 round trip. The word is that there will be fewer airfare bargains this fall and into the holiday seasons, so look for fly-drive packages on such sites as to-today or smartertravel.com. Amazing how much you can save with package deals.
VBT Bike Tour: I went on a VBT Bike Tour to Prince Edward Island two summers ago and had a great time. Also, I can recommend Backroads, with whom I had an outstanding chateau bike trip to France.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the tips.
Alexandria, Va: I am trying to find decent airfare to Rio in the early to mid December range (returning before Christmas). Do you have any guidance on finding the best deals? Do you recommend going through a consolidator? Any recommended consolidators? I've never gone that route before and am a little apprehensive about it. But I'd be more than happy to do it if it will save me some money. Thanks!
Carol Sottili: A consolidator may be able to help. Try www.moffits.com to find out who specializes in Rio - you'll probably then have to go to a travel agent to book. Most of the major consolidators, such as DF-W, Picasso, etc., will book Rio.
Burke, Va.: We're leaving on a Mexican cruise next week, and I'm looking for suggestions on things to do during our port stop in Mazatlan. The tours available through the cruise line sound pretty lame.
Gary Lee: We're not familiar with Matzatlan. Is anyone out there?
BR, LA: The best way you can help hurricane victims is to return to N.O. and the state when it is up and running. Tourist dollars will be desperately needed and welcomed.
Gary Lee: Yes, we agree. How are things looking down there?
In The Dog House, Washington, DC: The wife and I had to delay our honeymoon this past spring because of events out of my control, (work schedule). We will have a chance to take one this coming Dec./early Jan. but want to go someplace with some adventure, history and culture. Doesn't have to be warm but we don't want Lappland either. Any suggestions from the Crew or the Audience?
Andrea Sachs: I would suggest Australia (Outback and Great Barrier Reef for adventure, Sydney and Melbourne for culture); Argentina/Chile, with maybe a side trip to Patagonia; or Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.
Anyone want to add to my suggestions?
Silver Spring, Md.: I was wondering how much plane tickets actually increase closer to the date of the flight. Does it make a difference whether you book a flight three months or three weeks in advance? Sometimes it seems like prices fluctuate daily.
Carol Sottili: So many variables are at work. Pricing experts watch how the seats are filling. If flights between two destinations are selling well, prices won't drop. But if seats are going begging, they will. Prices do fluctuate daily based on sales (airlines will match other airlines' sales), load factors, etc. The trick is to know the range of prices that are typically offered in a particular market and to strike when the price is low.
Washington, DC: Love the chats. Here's a field report: I took a short (Thurs-Mon) vacation in Belize a couple of weeks ago and LOVED IT!!! Charming, relaxing, (seemingly) unadulterated fun for nature lovers and cutlure vultures alike. A friend and I stayed in Belize City and spent most of the time inland ... caving, cavorting in the waterfalls, visiting the zoo, seeing Mayan ruins (Altun Ha), touring the culturally and geographically diverse countryside. We also spent a day beaching it between Caye Caulker (just TOO slow for me) and Ambergris Caye. I'd definitely recommend staying in Belize City if you don't want to dedicate your entire trip to water adventure b/c the country has so much to offer. Its not a plush, uber-tourist area (like, say Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas) but I found it plenty comfortable and safe.
I STRONGLY recommend visiting in September because (1) its the slowest part of slow tourist season and we were the ONLY people at the caves, waterfalls, etc when we visited (AWESOME); and (2) its festival time in Belize. Belize has a mardi-gras-style Carnival on Sept 10 and another huge street party and celebration for Independence Day on Sept 21 so there is lots to see an experience from pop and traditional culture during that time. We ended up visiting between both big holidays but there we smaller street festivals (Mexian Day, reggae & calypso fest) going on each night we were there.
My next trip to Central America: experience Garifuna music, food, and people of southern Belize and Honduras.
KC Summers: Thanks for this enthusiastic ground-level report! I'm a big fan of Belize too, but gotta say I wouldn't base my trip in Belize City -- it had a bit of a scary vibe, I thought. Instead, I split my time between a town near the Guatemalan border and a resort on Ambergris. That way it wasn't all water-oriented. Wish I could've made it to Caulker -- I think that sloooow lifestyle sounds appealing!
Good point about visiting in September -- just about my favorite time of year to visit anywhere. No matter what month you go to any Caribbean destination, though, it's wise to check the cruise-ship port schedules. The days they unload their passengers can totally change the character of a place.
Burke, Va.: Another tip on passports. There are countries who will not permit you to enter with less than 6 months on your passport. I learned this from a Singapore Air agent who tried to deny me access to my flight to Australia for this very reason. Fortunately, I had done my homework with the consulate and knew that it only had to be good for the duration of my visa (3 months). After rechecking, the agent found that the 6-month rule didn't apply to Australia. But what a scare!
Andrea Sachs: Nice catch on your behalf--and a good lesson for the rest of you procrastinators.
Arlington, Va.: I will be in Taipei Taiwan on business in late October. What are the must-see and must-do experiences in the city? Are there any easy side trips from Tapiei that one could do over a weekend?
Cindy Loose: Oh, you lucky dear. I really like Taipei, and there are weekend trips.
In Taipei--it's not likely you'll miss the night markets--lots of fun. The national museum holds most of the treasures of China, since Chang Kai Shek brought most of them along when he and his folks fled. (Good thing, or they would have been smashed in the Cultural Revolution.) You must have dim sum in the Grand Hotel, and again at a hole in the wall called Din Tai Fong. (I'll post a story I did so you can see addresses.)Also, great temples.
The big challenge for your weekend will be to decide whether to go north to the spas with natural hot mineral water, or to Taroko Gorge. Hmmmm-I guess I'd go for the Gorge.
For Rio Traveler ...: Not sure what your specific travel interests are, but I feel any trip to Brazil should include a visit to Salvador da Bahia. Rio is great for the beaches, big touries sites (eg Christ statue) shopping, and beautiful people most associates with Brazil but Salvador is such a visually picturesque and culturally rich place. The flight from Rio to Salvador is a couple of hours but I'd definitely spend at least 2 or 3 days in Salvador if I were plannign a 10-day trip. Spend time walking the steep, cobblestone streets and the magnificent architecture of the old town, Pelhourino; shop a the mercado modelo and have a beer watching the sunset; see the Olodun festival if you're lucky enough to be there on a Tuesday. Bahia is the BEST of Brazil, in my book.
Re: RFID chip: Just wanted to throw in another point of view: Even though my passport isn't up for renewal for another 3 years, I'd prefer to get a new one BEFORE the new technology kicks in -- frankly, because it scares me - anyone with an RFID chip reader can glean information about me as I walk by them, or am in the general vicinity of them (abroad and locally). I greatly value my privacy and will definitely renew my passport before the new technology so as to assure my safety over the next 10 years.
Andrea Sachs: Definitely something to ponder. Thanks!
washingtonpost.com: And Now, Taiwan , (March 14, 2004)
Cindy Loose: For the Taiwan traveler
Columbia, Md.: I would like to purchase Chinese yuan before going to Shanghai. Are there reliable on-line foreign currency websites that I can order some from? My bank (Wachovia) says it can't get yuan.
Anne McDonough: We haven't used this service, but a reader wrote in a few months ago about a company called International Currency Express (888-278-6628, www.foreignmoney.com), which lists RMB as one of the currencies they handle. Anyone have a personal experiences with sites like this one?
Just a suggestion for chatters visiting what we blithely refer to as "third world" countries: leave the contents of your suitcase(s) with a charity for distribution to those needful. My substantially better half and I were part of a church mission trip to Cuba last month where we helped construct a new sanctuary, and it was suggested/expected that volunteers would return home with only the clothes on their backs (backsides, too, I suppose). It was, and is, the right thing to do.
Gary Lee: Sounds like a good idea. I remember taking the Trans Siberian to Moscow several years back. I give away clothes at every stop across Siberia and the Urals. By the time I got to Moscow, I gave away my suitcase.
Bethesda, Md.: Has anybody noticed their frequent flier miles not being posted? I normally don't look closely, but when I did yesterday, USAir had missed a whole return flight, and Delta missed portions of flights. I always make a point of checking it at the gate, but I don't for connecting flights. It is odd that I have this problem suddenly occuring with 2 different airlines. They ask for us to wait for 3 months for it to be posted, then if it doesn't, they ask for boarding passes. Who keeps them so long? Is this a new trick?
John Deiner: Hmmmmmmmmmm. Interesting problem there, Beth. I just checked around the Crew, and no one reports a lot of missed miles on their frequent-flier accounts. (I'm actually amazed at how quickly Southwest credits show up)But you bring up a most excellent point: Everyone should monitor those closely, and maybe it doesn't hurt to keep your boarding passes tucked away somewhere for a bit, like next to the paper shredder.
Anyone else out there with a similar problem?
Chicago, Ill.: Thanks for answering my question about customs and immigration. I am a US citizen, so no trouble there (though I used to be a green card holder back in the day so I've seen it from different angles). I'm just griping about the multiple added security layers only for US entry.
The lines yesterday at O'Hare, as they typically are, were vastly longer than at virtually any other airport I've been to outside the US. That includes the line to get out through customs, where you just handed over your form to somebody who couldn't have cared less. We're talking lines over a hundred yards long. And I've seen this before. The whole thing was ad hoc and chaotic. Throw in the 10 minute "don't do this don't do that" movie they show on the plane, plus the warning signs, plus the paperwork (and fingerprint stuff, etc.) for non-citizens/residents, it gets crazy. Departure terminals overseas now have special sections of the airport roped off for US-bound flights, with added security. Any unusual itinerary gets added questioning. (You ever try flying to one city but leaving for the US from another?) We had to show our passport at the gate -and- getting on the plane yesterday. And when you arrive if you use your cell phone, for example, they flip out, even past immigration waiting for luggage.
Maybe I'm just grumpy after 10+ hour flights home, but the differences this American has seen between arrival in foreign cities and arrival in the US is noticeable.
Cindy Loose: Funny you should mention the cell phone thing---my boss and I were just discussing that. The TSA insists that the signs ordering you not to use your cell phone means only that you shouldn't use them while talking to the immigration or customs guys, and they say officially it's not a legal notice. But at same time, people keep getting warned against cell phone use. Really stupid.
But, the overall experience might vary by airport, cause us citizen folks returning to D.C. aren't finding any great hassle.
More Flyi : As I notice Independence Air has been a popular topic today, I was one of those affected by today's announcement of canceling West Coast flights. I was able to get my money back, but got no recourse in the extra cost it is going to take to rebook a West Coast flight over Christmas. Just thought I would warn others who may be in the same boat. another interesting point- the company never called or emailed me to let me know my flight was canceled.
Carol Sottili: They should have at least called to cancel.
Chicago, Ill: Any thoughts from you or readers on visiting Toronto Thanksgiving week? We've never been, and my husband and I are looking for a relatively inexpensive getaway for a few days. I'm also thinking about cashing in miles for the trip -- while people say to save the miles for a big trip, those seats never seem available.
I wish I had a hurricane volunteer tip, as I would love to help too, but I think most places want cash. Maybe it's like volunteers at soup kitchens at Thanksgiving and Christmas: we all think more about helping at certain times of the year, but the need is ongoing. I'd bet there are lots of places locally to help, if you have time off and want to contribute.
Gary Lee: Thanks for your thoughts on relief.
As for Toronto at Thanksgiving, it sounds like a good idea to me if you don't mind brisk weather. There are LOTS of things to do indoors -- Excellent theater, great restaurants, a wide range of good musuems -- that you can easily fill your time.
Prague in November: My mom and I managed to find a sweet deal for a week in Prague in November. Are there any absolute must-sees? And how warmly should we pack?
Anne McDonough: I'd bring a sweater, a jacket you could wear over it and a wrap. And a hat, just in case. That way you've got plenty of layers, can wear them all together if neccessary or separately if you've got temperate weather. As for don't miss sites...the Vysehrad cemetery, Josefov, Charles Bridge, the hrad. I stayed in the Zizkov area, a working class neighborhood that was a nice change from the touristy parts yet within walking distance of the old town square are. Outside of the city, Terezin, Karlovy Vary and Kutna Hora are popular day trips.
Deep Valley, USA: It's not clear what volunteers can do for the hurricane areas on the ground there - maybe if you're a construction person or can start a day care site quickly. Otherwise you're taking up infrastructure that residents need more.
It makes more sense to volunteer here to help the displaced find work, shelter, etc.
Or to foster pets displaced by the 'cane - some haven't been reunited with their owners yet.
Gary Lee: We like the idea of fostering Pets and of doing what you can on the ground at home.
Pittsburgh, Pa.: Just a note: I was never one for purchasing travel insurance, but when I booked a 3-day Disney Cruise back in July, I decided to purchase their policy, thinking that, well, it will be hurricane season when we are planning to go (mid-Sept), so why not. Well, my 3-year old daughter fractured her arm the day before we were set to leave, requiring us to cancel the trip. Well, that travel insurance came in handy - just filled out some paperwork and we will get most of our money back. Well worth the cost. We are planning to re-book the trip for early next year, and be sure that I will spring for the insurance again!
Does anyone know how to obtain this type of insurance if you will be traveling abroad? (my husband and I will be going to London next summer for a week's vacation)
Cindy Loose: Glad it worked out for you---an yeh, there are families who lay out many thousands of dollars--maybe as much as their car is worth--and risk it all. It's natural to assume that is you have some terrible emergency, thecruise line will be sympathetic and say, "Hey, we've got your money already, so no problem, just go after your appendix heals." But the DONT act that way.
As to insuring your trip to London---there are a couple sites that are like online shopping malls for insurance, where dozens of policies are available at one place. The one that comes to mind is insuremytrip.com. Just read all the fine print, to make sure it covers what you think it covers.
I hate MIA: I have yet to figure a way to go from any flight to another without going back through security. (Which is probably a good thing, but a hassle). So I try to fly through Atlanta when I can.
And mapquest has 31 min to BWI and 34 min to National. Depends on the cabbie tho.
Gary Lee: It's possible to connect on most outgoing connecting flights without going back through security. But when you enter the country you will have to pass through customs, then go back through security.
Poolesville, Md.: I was looking forward to yesterday's Way To Go section, but was somewhat disappointed in the airports section
Most of the info provided, is available on the airports' web sites. What I really want to know:
Dulles - Why does it seem security checkpoints are always so crowded? At least twice, I have heard a security guard at the front of the line instructing the passengers to blame the airlines. Who is responsible for the lines? Do the airlines/airport authority/TSA care that the process seems unbearable, or is it written off to captive audience/post 9/11 realities?
BWI - living in upper Montgomery County, BWI is not a realistic option. (My own theory on why the Inter-county connector is finally being built is to keep I-270-corridor Marylanders from using National or Dulles.)
National - Covering the political restrictions (and exceptions) on flight distances. Do flights into National still have the thirty-minute-before-landing rule?
I guess I was hoping for more of a usability review, than "just the facts." Maybe this is a different story? Thanks!
KC Summers: Thanks for the feedback, Poolesville. The point of the special section was to offer practical advice that folks could clip and save for use when planning or taking a trip. Hence the nuts-and-bolts guides to the three DC-area airports. We tend to address changing security issues, new TSA decrees, etc., in our weekly Coming and Going column, so keep an eye out for timely updates in that space.
As to your specific questions:
1. Dulles security is not always a nightmare. It depends on when you go -- what day of the week, and time of day -- and what security changes are in effect at a given time. I had no problems with security two weeks ago and on a previous trip a few months ago. In any case, the airlines are not responsible for the security lines.
2. Re BWI, try living in Virginia if you think it's inconvenient! Anyway, my advice is to get over it. If you want to get the lowest fares and most convenient flights, be more open to using all three DC-area airports. (You may be onto something re the ICC, but that doesn't change the reality of it.)
3. No more 30-minute rule on National flights.
Washington DC: I am thinking of taking my family to NYC for Thanksgiving to see the parade, etc. Any good tips for watching the parade or where to eat?
Anne McDonough: I've seen 24 Thanksgiving Day parades standing at 72nd and Central Park West, across the street from the Dakota and from an apartment which Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman alledgedly used to own. I'm not vouching for it being the absolute best vantage point--some poeple like being around Macy's, others like to see the parade march west--but it's near the parade's start, so you get there early and get to see Santa by 10ish if I'm remembering correctly (he brings up the rear of the parade), which is nice when the weather's freezing and folks have Thanksgiving lunches/dinners to rush off to. As for eating, I'm throwing that one out to the clicksters. Folks?
Washington, D.C.: A few weeks ago the flight crew asked for suggestions on what the travel section might do to improve it's service to the reader base. Well here's an idea that popped up at a little social gathering this weekend. Given the sudden escalation of gas prices, the cost of our weekend getaways from town have become a lot more pricey.This prompted one person to muse that we may have to return to our grandparent'custom of double and triple dates. So what if the travel section created an e-mail address and asked reader's to respond with fun things they have done on getaways with other couples. You could then glean the most interesting or unusual and list them in a small column each Sunday
KC Summers: That's a nice idea! Got something to get us started?
Washington, D.C.: I'm toying with the idea of traveling to Iran--I'd primarily interested in archaeological sites of the Persian empire. Does anyone know of a reputable tour organization to travel with? I'm too chicken on go on my own. Thanks!
Cindy Loose: I haven't used them personally and would not vouch 100 percent for any particular firm, but travel-adventures.com is a well known company, and it seems from a quick look at their website that they still do Iran. But frankly, that surprises me. Have you checked out the consular info sheet at www.travel.state.gov?
Washington, DC: Two comments: first I was wondering how common it was for airlines to have delays because they don't have pilots? I ask because I was subjected to a two hour delay on Thursday night for this very reason (Southwest from BWI to Manchester, NH). The plane was there - but no pilots.
As for your question at the begining of the chat - one great way for people to help out victims of the hurricane and travel is to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build. Many schools have "Alternative Spring Break" programs that have been doing this for years, and now many are organizing similar trips for Columbus Day weekend. Church groups would be another way to organize something like this.
Carol Sottili: Crew problems happen. I don't know that there are stats out there that break it down, but the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.transtats.bts.gov) has some info. In July, for example, 7.11 percent of flights were delayed because of the air carrier, which would include crew problems.
Good tip on Habitat for Humanity.
RFID info: It isn't quite as bad as all that. At the level of signal for passport chips you have to be VERY close to get any signal, espcially through clothing, purse,wallet, etc.
So don't be too paranoid about it.
Andrea Sachs: Thanks for the input.
Deep Valley, USA: I need a fresh idea for our year-end vacation cum mileage run (so it has to be far away).
We love London but would like a change. Is there anyplace in Eastern Europe you would suggest that isn't too cold or too expensive or too shut down over the holidays?
Gary Lee: There are lots of places in the East that are not very expensive or shut down over the holidays.
For starters, check out Budapest, Krakow, and Bratislava.
Berlin is also a great bet.
But wherever you end up there, chances are pretty good that it's going to be cold...
We can give advice on all sorts of things but we can't change weather patterns...
Re: Hassles re-entering the U.S.: I travel internationally (for business) about once a month, returning mostly through Dulles. Although the lines are sometimes long, I've always found the Immigration & Customs process to be straightforward, and the agents to be pleasant.
Cindy Loose: Dulles is my usual exit point too. Aside from the stupid cell phone rule--one guard told me it was to deter terroists from using their cell phones to take photos of the entry point--it seems to be no more of a hassle than getting into any other country.
re: Honeymooners: I would also suggest Mexico and Turkey. If you are looking for a short-distance, quick getaway without breaking the bank, Mexico even Cancun. I was not aware how much adventure tourism there is, but I went to a great hidden adventure park where we snorkeled in the cenotes, did zip-line, and walked in corn maize, not to mention the waterparks, historical cities, and just laying on the beach. Isla Mujeres is very romantical, couple nights there woudl be great. I am also recommending Turkey because the flights would be cheap, temperatures mild, and because nothing shuts down for Christmas or New Year's you could extend your vacation to include those days. Istanbul has great culture and history, and you could go to the south or Capadoccia for more adventure.
Andrea Sachs: Great suggestions. Morocco might be another one to add to the list.
Long Island, NY: After the hurricanes, it seems like most people have forgotten that more than New Orleans was affected. There are towns accross that area of the south that have been flattened. Habitat for Humanity is building homes off-site and moving them to those who need them in the affected areas. One could volunteer to help at one of the sites (I know NYC is one), and gain some skills too!
A working vacation so to speak.
Gary Lee: Thanks for that very good tip.
Passport renewal: Can I renew and get a new one before the old one expires? I look almost nothing like I did when the pic was taken and would love to not have to go through the doubletake, scrutiny, etc. every time I use it.
Cindy Loose: Sure, you can get a new one whenever you want. Get a good photo and go for it.
McLean, Va: RE Miami--I wrote you back in January about the situation in Miami. After coming back to Miami on a flight from Belize, I was caught up in the most choatic re-entry scenes I have ever encoutered at a US port of entry. I promised myself that I would avoid Miami if at possible on any future international flight. I have found the facilities and people in San Juan to be much more hospitable.
Gary Lee: Thanks for the San Juan tip, a good alternative suggestion.
Washington, DC: I am not sure how much of a tip this is but lots of churches sponser trips around the globe to do mission work. The participants always pay their own way so this is not a way to see a country on the cheap and do a little volunteer work on the side. I am sure churches would love to have any help they can get on many of the trips. I know people who have built schools, maternity clinics and houses in Africa and the Carribbean. Talk to freinds and neighbors about their churches. I am sure there is a broad spectrum of proselytizing on these trip just as there is a broad spectrum of churches.
Gary Lee: That's an idea. But it seems that it would require something beyond volunteer work...
Stuttgart Germany: Hi! I have a chance to travel to Croatia and the Adriatic coast. I'm looking for guidebook/webpage recommendations that will help me plan my trip. I'm looking for info on everything: sights, hotels, restaurants, etc.
KC Summers: Lucky you. Of course, you HAVE checked out our free travel index, right? That should be your first step when doing trip research: Go to www.washingtonpost.com/travel and scroll down to Travel Archive, then click on International Destinations, then search alphabetically by country. There you'll find a nice piece from a couple of years ago on one couple's discovery of Croatia not long after the war ended. Note that our archives are FREE, not like the rest of the Post archives.
Good guidebooks on Croatia include Lonely Planet, Bradt and the Rough Guide, though prices are a little out of date. Rick Steves has a nice little section in Croatia in his Eastern Europe guidebook.
Thanks for taking my question re: JetBlue last week! Was just following up since you said you'd check into it. Also, good point about Southwest fighting JetBlue coming into BWI, but AirTran is already there. And, aren't the low-cost carriers going to eventually have to start competing head to head? I am just not a fan of Southwest, and would love to see them have to really compete on things other than price!
Cindy Loose: It's possible that officials aren't sharing some scoop with me, but a couple calls did not yield any infon about Jet Blue invading BWI territory.
But you are right--the so-called discount carriers are going to have to compete head to head more and more. They're now 25 % of hte domestic market, and I just saw a reference to a study saying they'll be half in ---sorry, I forget in how many years, but it wasn't a long, long time from now.
More on Belize: You suggested staying in one of the resorts in Amberguis Caye how about renting a house? We are thinking about taking a 1 week vacation during thanksgiving and due to some costs for some we were thinking about renting a house b/c it is cheaper.
KC Summers: Yeah, if you just stroll the beach on Ambergris you'll se lots villas for rent down there. Google "Belize villas" for tons of links.
Anyone got specific recommendations to share? (quickly)
Falls Church,Va.: My boyfriend and I will be meeting up in Savannah, GA to spend Columbus Day weekend together. (He's in middle-of-nowhere GA doing training for his job.) Our hotel is in the historic district. Any recommendations for a couple places not to miss from you guys or fellow chatters?
Gary Lee: Steve Hendrix, our staff specialist on Savannah is out this week.
Any other clicksters have Savannah tips?
PLEASE ANSWER!!!!!: We're leaving for our honeymoon next Monday, to Greece. We're doing Athen, Mykonos and Santorini. Two questions: Will we need an electrical converter to charge our camera, etc...? What is the best way to use money there? Convert all to drachma? Credit card? Use US dollars? Thanks so much!
Carol Sottili: No more drachmas. Greece went to euros back in 2002. Use your credit card for most things if you're staying in a tourist spot. If you're going to some out of the way rural place, you'll need euros. I'd exchange some here before you go at a currency exchange place such as Travelex or American Express, and I'd use ATM in Greece to get advances if you need more. And yes, Greece's electrical voltage is 220, so you'll need converter.
Re: getting foreign currency before you go: The person looking to get Chinese yuan before leaving the US could try American Express travel offices. There's one in downtown DC, and they got me Maltese currency (they had to special-order it, but it only took a few days). I forget what I looked for in the phone book -- "currency exchange" or something similar -- but I'm sure there are other options. I wanted something that I could go myself and pick up, as opposed to having it done by mail and worrying that the money would get lost.
Anne McDonough: Good idea. Also, TravelEx (202-371 9220, www.travelex.com) also carries Chinese kuai; call ahead to make sure the branch you go to carries enough of the currency you're looking for.
Washington, DC: Hi - I have an 8 hour layover in Mexico City on my way to and from Costa Rica over the holidays. I'll be there on Christmas Eve and on 5 January. Any tips for where to go (I'll be alone, 28yr old female) to spend the day? Not interested in fitting in a ton of things, just in someplace comfortable and accessible to spend the day. Any restaurants I could sit at to drink a margarita, eat some guacamole and read a book while I wait for my plane?
Gary Lee: One idea is to take a taxi to the new W hotel there and hang out in the lobby. There's a nice cafe and you can sit and read and then go back to the airport at the end of the day.
If you have a bit more ambition, you should go to the Museum of Anthropolgy. It's awesome!
cape town, SA: have you all seen the new live feed south african airways uses that shows the view from the tail of taxi-ing down the runway and in flight? very cool.
Carol Sottili: Haven't seem it, but it sounds almost as cool as those people in the JetBlue flight watching themselves on TV as they got ready to crash land. Luckily, all turned out well!
Toronto at Thanksgiving!: Please alert the past poster interested in Toronto in laste November that the weekend coincides with the Canadian Version of the Super Bowl! So there may be rowdy fans in the mix.
Gary Lee: Good idea, thanks.
Re. China currency: I believe the only place you can buy RMB other than inside China is in Hong Kong. I'm pretty sure that it's a 'closed currency' that you have to buy and sell while you are there.
Anne McDonough: You may be right, officically, but I just called TravelEx and they said they had RMB on hand.
Florida: I have the week between Christmas and New Year's off, so I'm looking for some suggestions on how to spend my vacation. I'm single and will be traveling alone but not interested in the singles scene or nightlife. Interests are art, history and architecture. No beaches (I have those already). Any travel ideas?
Cindy Loose: You need to narrow your search. Start with: how warm do you need it to be? If short sleeves or sweater weather is an answer, that pretty well cuts out Europe. If you have a coat and don't mind wearing it, all of Europe is a possibility. How about Greece--fly into Athens then drive into Corinth and beyond.
If you need warm and can afford it a long flight, how about Buenos Aires--lots of art, history and architecture there, and the dollar goes a long way once you arrive.
RE Taipei, Taiwan: I'm from there. You could hit the beach - there are some uncanny limestone (I believe) formations - a famous one is the queen's head (sort of reminds you of Nefertiti) - but check w/ the hotel - those things are somewhat fragile to env. forces so they may not exist anymore. To the east of the island, Hua-Lien is gorgeous (not sure if same as the gorges mentioned - my apologies for not knowing their "English" names).
Fun/food-wise: night markets are a definite do. They tend to be easier to come by in "less" urban areas. Great for food and walking around at night. I think the tallest building, 101, should be open for visitors. You can probably see it from quite far away - great for pictures. Structurally it's very neat. Good shopping there, too.
And the Hyatt (the one near the "founding father's memorial") in Taipei has 8 or more great restaurants in it. Try the Shanghai cuisine or the lunchtime buffet. Both excellent (and I'm extremely hard-to-impress when it comes to Chinese food). Buffet in Taipei is an exquisite affair (nothing like "Chinese" buffet restaurants here).
Cindy Loose: Thanks. Normally I'd never recommend or even try a restaurant in a hotel, but sometimes I dream of the dim sum at the Grand.
Silver Spring, Md.: My husband and I are hoping to go camping in Shenandoah NP this weekend, arriving there Saturday morning. There are no sites available this weekend at the campground that takes reservations, but I was wondering if you or the chatters know if there are likely to be sites at any of the first-come, first-served campgrounds. Would the nearby national forests be a better choice? Thanks for your help!
Also, I'm sure you've answered this before, but is there an archive of the Weekend Getaways anywhere?
KC Summers: I wish we knew the answer to this, but our resident camping nut, Steve Hendrix, is off doing hurricane duty. I'm guessing that GW National Forest is a much less-crowded option then Shenandoah NP, but that's just a guess. Can anyone help in two mins??
And yes there is an Escapes archive online, under Mid-Atlantic on the travel home page (directly under Travel Archive). Again, it's free. Also see yesterday's special section, Pages 2 and 3, for a vetted list of great Escapes, by topic. Some good outdoors stuff in there, and lots moe.
Gary Lee: Thanks for all your questions. Thanks, too, to those who offered ideas about how to volunteer to those in need of relief.
We liked tip from the clickster in Woodbridge who suggested leaving eveything we take except the clothes on our backs.
If you send me your address to leeg@washpost.com, I'll make sure you get the book.
See you all next week!
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Join live discussions from the Washington Post. Feature topics include national, world and DC area news, politics, elections, campaigns, government policy, tech regulation, travel, entertainment, cars, and real estate.
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Web Scammers Strike Before Hurricane Does
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In a spree mirroring the online gold rush that accompanied Hurricane Katrina, online speculators are scooping up hundreds of Hurricane Rita-related Web domain names, and Rita-themed Internet auctions have begun.
Scammers often use such Web sites to trick people into making donations, authorities said. The quick proliferation of questionable activities spurred the federal government to work with Internet service providers, computer security companies and anti-spam groups to shut down and prosecute owners of fraudulent sites, according to several participants in the ad hoc task force.
The group has already closed more than 40 Web sites falsely claiming to raise money for relief organizations, said Tom Liston, a security consultant with Washington-based Intelguardians.com and an incident handler with the SANS Internet Storm Center, a nonprofit group that tracks online-hacking trends.
Liston began tracking new Web site registrations containing the word "Rita" on Monday and as of yesterday had found more than 1,100 such sites, he said.
On Thursday, someone used eBay to begin auctioning off a burnt piece of toast with the meteorological symbol for a hurricane and the word "Rita" scraped onto it, promising to donate 40 percent of the final auction price to storm victims. EBay shut down the auction later that day.
Several Rita-related domain names were for sale on eBay yesterday, including one for RitaAid.net that started the bidding at $10,000. The auction did not claim that any of the proceeds would benefit relief efforts.
"I expect we're going to probably see just as many attempts at fraud with Rita as we did with Katrina, and the fact that both of these hurricanes hit at the same time is going to increase amount of scams out there," Liston said. "Because [the hurricane] is such a newsworthy issue and people constantly have this in front of them, unfortunately that's going to help these lowlifes out there to succeed in what they're doing."
Organizations that said they were members of the ad hoc Rita task force working with the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, include the SANS Internet Storm Center, the Spamhaus Project, the Anti-Phishing Working Group and San Diego Internet-security firm Websense Inc.
Officials of the Homeland Security Department did not respond to interview requests for this story.
After Katrina, scam artists set up dozens of Web sites asking for PayPal donations but offering little or no information about what they planned to do with the money. As the massive neared land, registrations of new Internet domain names containing the name "Katrina" skyrocketed, and hundreds of Katrina-related auctions emerged on eBay that flouted the auction site's rules for charitable giving.
Virus writers also took advantage of the disaster by e-mailing malicious attachments posing as photographs of the storm's devastation.
The scams prompted U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to outline anti-fraud priorities for the FBI and the Justice Department. State attorneys general in Florida and Missouri also sued people who were fraudulently accepting donations for hurricane victims.
Krebs is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com.
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In a spree mirroring the online gold rush that accompanied Hurricane Katrina, online speculators are scooping up hundreds of Hurricane Rita-related Web domain names, and Rita-themed Internet auctions have begun.
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10 Insurers Approved to Market Drug Benefit
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The 42 million Americans on Medicare will face a dizzying array of choices for government-subsidized prescription drug coverage next month when private health insurance companies begin jockeying to sign them up for the new benefit.
Ten large insurers have been given the green light to market the new drug plans to consumers starting Oct. 1, Medicare officials said yesterday. Because other companies will offer coverage on a regional basis, participants in every state will have at least 11 providers to choose from. In some they will have as many as 20 choices, with some providers offering multiple plans.
Enrollment begins Nov. 15. Coverage takes effect Jan. 1.
"Medicare is taking a historic step," said Mark B. McClellan, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "Thanks to the strong competitive response, everyone with Medicare will be able to choose a drug plan that addresses their individual concerns about cost and coverage and convenience. These premiums will be lower than expected in many cases."
No details were available about specific plans yesterday. McClellan said that plans with premiums of less than $20 a month will be available in every state. Plans with premiums exceeding $37 should be rare, he said.
Beneficiaries also can choose to get drug coverage through Medicare Advantage plans, which offer comprehensive health care through HMO and PPO-like systems and serve about 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries.
The new drug benefit, passed amid furious political wrangling on Capitol Hill in 2003, is the most significant and expensive expansion of Medicare since the creation of the federal health program for the elderly and disabled in 1965.
The cost to the federal government is expected to be $720 billion over the first 10 years. The benefit is being rolled out at a time of persistent budget deficits and mounting expenditures for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and relief and recovery efforts from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The fiscal pressures are so daunting that some conservative Republican lawmakers have called for delaying implementation of the new benefit, but the Bush administration has rejected that idea.
In general, the drug benefit will work like this: After an individual pays a $250 annual deductible, Medicare will cover 75 percent of drug costs up to $2,250. The coverage then stops until the recipient has spent an additional $2,850 out of pocket, after which Medicare covers 95 percent of drug costs.
President Bush has said the new benefit will save retirees an average of $1,300 a year. The government expects as many as 30 million people will sign up for it for 2006.
There are about 1.75 million Medicare beneficiaries in the District, Maryland and Virginia. Eighteen providers will offer stand-alone drug plans in Maryland and D.C., and 16 will do so in Virginia. Several Medicare Advantage plans in each area will offer the drug benefit, as well.
Tricia Neuman, director of the Medicare Policy Project at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said the large number of providers means the new benefit is off to a good start. But there is still uncertainty over how many people will enroll, how easily they will sort through the options and whether some providers will drop out over time.
"Choices can present opportunities, but the question is: What will seniors do when they face so many choices?" Neuman said. "Some will comparison shop, others might be heavily influenced by marketing and some may be paralyzed by so many choices. . . . Not everybody should sign up, because some people already have adequate coverage."
Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, a nonprofit group that helps seniors navigate Medicare rules and benefits, said the number and complexity of the plans mean consumers will be hard-pressed to make informed decisions. The fact that so many companies will be angling for market share by emphasizing the most appealing features of their plans, and perhaps playing down the negative ones, will only make the task harder. And because the companies can make their pitches through telemarketing, there are concerns about fraud and identity theft, Hayes said.
"It's going to be open season for bad guys to exploit vulnerable older Americans," he said. "Some legitimate companies will play by the rules, but let's face it -- it's an open invitation for confused consumers to give out personal information."
McClellan said the government has hired private contractors to help it detect fraudulent schemes and improper business practices.
The Medicare agency also will provide tools to help consumers find a plan that best fits their needs, he said. On Sunday, Parade magazine will carry an insert with basic information about the drug benefit. Beginning in mid-October, consumers will be able to call an 800 number and check the agency's Web site ( http://www.medicare.gov/ ) to get help with plans. Also, next month, the "Medicare & You" handbook distributed to beneficiaries each year will contain details about plan choices.
"Based on costs, coverage and convenience, we will help people find a personalized plan that is best for their specific needs," McClellan said. "We want to make sure seniors get the help and support they need. . . . There are going to be a lot of resources to help people sort through the information."
The 10 companies that will offer the benefits nationwide are Aetna Life Insurance Co., Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., Coventry Health & Life Insurance, Medco Containment Life Insurance Co., Memberhealth Inc., Pacificare Life and Health Insurance Co., Silverscript Insurance Co., Unicare, United Health Care Insurance Co. and Wellcare Health Plans.
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Georgia Schools May Take a Break to Save Fuel
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ATLANTA, Sept. 23 -- Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) asked the state's schools to take two "early snow days" and cancel classes Monday and Tuesday to help conserve gasoline as Hurricane Rita threatens the nation's fuel supply line.
If all of Georgia's schools close, the governor estimated that 250,000 gallons of diesel fuel would be saved each day by keeping buses off the road.
The governor said an undetermined amount of regular gasoline also would be saved by allowing teachers, other school employees and some parents to stay home those days. Electricity would be conserved by keeping the schools closed.
It is up to each school superintendent to decide whether to call off classes.
"If Georgians stick together, work together and conserve together, we can weather whatever problems Rita brings our way with the least possible inconvenience," Perdue said.
As he did after Hurricane Katrina, Perdue asked the state's residents to limit nonessential travel and look for commuting alternatives including telecommuting, carpooling and four-day workweeks. He asked the state's government agencies and businesses to encourage gas conservation among their employees.
He said if demand is reduced, "we will have enough market power to hold prices down. All together, we can influence demand within our state."
Tim Callahan, spokesman for the 61,000-member Professional Association of Georgia Educators, said he is worried that Perdue's announcement would only prompt panic-buying at the pumps in the days ahead.
"I wonder if it's going to create the type of panic that we saw a few weeks back that drove prices over $3," Callahan said.
When gas prices jumped after Katrina, Georgia suspended its state gas tax -- about 15 cents per gallon. That gas-tax holiday expires Friday.
Dozens of the state's 181 school districts immediately announced plans to comply with the governor's request.
"We're in pretty decent shape as it relates to fuel supply, but who knows what's going to happen here in the next few days," said Cherokee County school spokesman Mike McGowan, whose district is complying.
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ATLANTA, Sept. 23 -- Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) asked the state's schools to take two "early snow days" and cancel classes Monday and Tuesday to help conserve gasoline as Hurricane Rita threatens the nation's fuel supply line.
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President Honors a Hero of the Korean War
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Tibor Rubin looked down at his emaciated body and had a hard time imagining that he was still a human being, likening himself to a sack of bones. He promised himself that if God would save him from the confines of a Nazi concentration camp, he would kiss the feet of his liberators and join them in their fight.
Rubin was 15 when U.S. soldiers opened the camp at Mauthausen, Austria, and he recalled yesterday that his 14 months there ended with a solemn promise: "I was going to go to the U.S. and join the U.S. Army to show my appreciation. . . . It was my wish to fight alongside them."
More than half a century later, President Bush yesterday bestowed the nation's highest military honor on Rubin, who not only joined the U.S. Army but also saved the lives of dozens of fellow American soldiers during the Korean War. Rubin used his survival skills from the brutal concentration camp to help nurture his U.S. comrades in a communist prisoner-of-war camp in the early 1950s, the White House said, giving hope and sustenance to soldiers who otherwise would likely have died in the custody of Chinese troops.
Rubin, 76, once a corporal, received the Medal of Honor for a series of courageous acts while he was fighting in Korea as a member of the 1st Cavalry Division. He is credited with going back to save a soldier who had been left for dead on the battlefield, single-handedly staving off a relentless attack on his unit, and later with saving lives in the desperate confines of the POW camp.
Receiving the coveted award from the president was the end of a long journey for the Hungarian-born Jew, whose opportunity to get the medal decades ago was thwarted by a discriminatory sergeant who did not like Rubin's religion or nationality, officials said. In an interview yesterday, Rubin said he was often given the most dangerous assignments. He noted that he was so often referred to by a derogatory phrase that he nearly forgot his own name.
But the Army has been reevaluating cases of heroism -- particularly involving members of minority groups -- to see whether Medals of Honor should have been given, and officers discovered Rubin and his story.
Yesterday, Bush said Rubin exemplifies what it means to be an American, praising his selfless courage and calling him a "true son of liberty."
"By repeatedly risking his own life to save others, Corporal Rubin exemplified the highest ideals of military service and fulfilled a pledge to give something back to the country that had given him his freedom," Bush said at a White House ceremony.
For Rubin, who goes by "Ted," having the Medal of Honor ribbon placed around his neck was beyond his dreams.
"I was just a small country boy from the Old Country, and now everyone is calling me 'sir,' " Rubin said in an interview. "A three-star general called me sir. Only in the United States could a little guy go to the White House and the president give me the highest medal in the country. Only in the United States."
Army officials credit Rubin with saving at least 40 lives, in part because he was able to keep soldiers' spirits up as they faced brutality similar to that in Mauthausen.
Rubin said that he stole food from his captors to feed his sick friends, and that he nurtured the weak through the hardest times. He said he knew that survival was mostly mind over matter, and that he tried to get his fellow soldiers to think positively.
"I tried to brainwash them, telling them they had to stay strong, not to forget their parents, that they have to get home and to not give up," Rubin said. "It wasn't easy on them. For someone that young, it's a nightmare. But I had been through it once, and that's why I came through and helped them.
"My mother used to tell us that we're all brothers and sisters, and in the Jewish religion, if you do a mitzvah -- nothing but a good deed -- that's better than if you go to temple and beat your head and ask the Lord to help you," he said. "I helped people because I could."
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Another Resolution On Iran Proposed
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VIENNA, Sept. 23 -- Three European Union countries submitted a draft resolution to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency Friday declaring that Iran had violated treaty obligations by secretly developing a nuclear program that could be used to build weapons. A vote on the matter by the agency's board was scheduled for Saturday, sparking complaints from countries that wanted to delay a showdown.
The resolution from Britain, France and Germany is slightly softer than an earlier version that would have immediately reported Iran to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Iran, which has said it is developing nuclear technologies for electric power, not bombs, responded Friday by threatening to enrich uranium if its case goes to the Security Council.
Last month, Iran began a process known as converting uranium. Enriching uranium would be a further step toward production of nuclear fuel. Enriched uranium, depending on its quality, can be used to produce nuclear energy or nuclear bombs.
The European resolution, if approved, would declare Iran to be in "noncompliance" with its nuclear obligations, a finding that would make it obligatory for the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to report the case to the Security Council. But the resolution leaves open the question of when a referral would be made.
A key argument that U.S. and European diplomats are using to sway Iran's backers to their side is that it would be possible to delay sending the matter to the Security Council for years if Iran changes its behavior.
While the resolution appears to have majority support on the 35-member board, it is opposed by several key members, including Russia, China and many of the board's 14 members from the Non-Aligned Movement, an international group that dates to the Cold War.
Diplomats said some of the countries opposing the resolution were threatening to stay away from Saturday's board meeting, which might deny the board the more than two-thirds quorum, or 24 members, necessary to hold a meeting. If that happened, a vote could be rescheduled, perhaps for next week.
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World news headlines from the Washington Post, including international news and opinion from Africa, North/South America, Asia, Europe and Middle East. Features include world weather, news in Spanish, interactive maps, daily Yomiuri and Iraq coverage.
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Phone Blitz To Push Kilgore
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RICHMOND, Sept. 23 -- Thousands of out-of-state Republicans are scheduled to conduct a telephone blitz of Virginia on Saturday, part of a first-of-its-kind effort by the Republican National Committee to recruit volunteers on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore.
With no statewide or federal elections in 48 states this year, the RNC has decided to put its activists to work.
Volunteers at call centers in 22 states will make calls to Virginia and New Jersey, the two states that will choose governors in November. In addition, more than 7,000 Republican activists responded to an e-mail from RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman and said they are willing to make calls to Virginia from their home phones or cell phones.
Mehlman's e-mail and the RNC effort are an indication of the stakes in the Virginia election. Republicans across the country have poured millions into the effort to defeat Democrat Timothy M. Kaine and independent H. Russell Potts Jr.
"Our party is like a family. And when a family member like Jerry needs our help, we all pitch in," Mehlman said in the e-mail. "Virginia sent busloads of volunteers to battleground states to help elect Republicans in 2004 and we need to return the favor in 2005."
"It's simple to help," Mehlman wrote. "We're asking you to make just 30 phone calls. Your phone calls to Republican voters in Virginia will remind them of the upcoming election, and the importance of voting for Jerry."
Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner said the Democratic campaign is "not worried about" the Republican effort.
"It's amusing, coming from the campaign that made so much noise about out-of-state support for the Kaine campaign," she said. Kilgore operatives have said Kaine has hired out-of-state activists to put up signs at events.
Skinner said that while the RNC calls are being made, Kaine will be greeting Virginia voters at an Ashland coffeehouse and giving a speech about the environment.
The Republican activists, virtually none of whom have met Kilgore, will be armed with a brief script telling them what to say and a list of phone numbers to call, RNC officials said.
The idea, said spokesman Aaron Mclear, is to whip up support for Kilgore among Virginia's GOP supporters. "In other parts of the country, it's important to elect Jerry Kilgore," Mclear said, indicating the significance to the party of claiming another governorship.
On Friday, the candidates for governor engaged in more traditional campaigning -- Kilgore, Kaine and Potts campaigned at the Virginia State Fair in Richmond. Potts, a Republican state senator representing Winchester, is running for governor as an independent.
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RICHMOND, Sept. 23 -- Thousands of out-of-state Republicans are scheduled to conduct a telephone blitz of Virginia on Saturday, part of a first-of-its-kind effort by the Republican National Committee to recruit volunteers on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Jerry W. Kilgore.
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Top Ehrlich Aide Assisting Abramoff Probe
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A top aide to Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has for the past year been cooperating with federal investigators who are examining the activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a spokesman for the governor said yesterday.
A federal grand jury issued a subpoena last summer to Edward Miller, Ehrlich's deputy chief of staff, because of Miller's role in establishing a Silver Spring company called Grassroots Interactive.
The company, now defunct, was in the news yesterday because of reports that it collected hefty fees from one of Abramoff's lobbying clients, Tyco International Ltd. -- money that was allegedly diverted to other entities controlled by Abramoff and misspent.
Miller stepped down as the company's resident agent in September 2003 when he took a job with the Ehrlich administration.
Responding to media inquiries about Miller's role in the case, the governor's office for the first time acknowledged that the deputy was cooperating with federal investigators.
"The governor is aware that Ed has been extremely helpful to the investigation," said Henry Fawell, Ehrlich's spokesman. "Ed is a valued member of our team who has been assisting the investigation for more than a year."
Fawell would not say whether Ehrlich (R) had personal knowledge of Miller's activities with Grassroots Interactive.
Abramoff and his wife, who live in Maryland, donated $16,000 to Ehrlich's 2002 campaign for governor and $7,750 to the Maryland Republican Party, according to state records. Abramoff also was a guest at a December 2003 Hanukah party thrown by the governor at the executive mansion.
Neither Miller nor his attorney, Aron Raskas, returned calls seeking comment yesterday. In an interview last year with Roll Call newspaper, Raskas emphasized that Miller had done nothing improper or unethical.
It is not clear what relationship, if any, Miller had with Grassroots Interactive when the company received a $2 million payment, at Abramoff's direction, from Tyco.
Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for Tyco, said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm promised to repay $1.5 million of that fee because the firm had determined during an internal investigation that the money was "diverted to entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff" and misspent.
Abramoff, under indictment on wire fraud and conspiracy charges, remains the focus of a lengthy investigation by a task force led by prosecutors at the Justice Department that also includes investigators at the Internal Revenue Service, the Interior Department and General Services Administration.
The probe initially focused on whether Abramoff bilked Native American tribes that paid him tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and other fees, but it has since widened to include other matters.
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A top aide to Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has for the past year been cooperating with federal investigators who are examining the activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a spokesman for the governor said yesterday.
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China's Moment
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In September 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt brokered the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire), which settled the Russo-Japanese War. Settling an extra-hemispheric dispute between foreign powers marked the emergence of the United States, an economic and demographic dynamo, as a world power and serious actor on the international stage.
Exactly 100 years later, a statement of principles has been issued from Beijing on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program. If it holds -- the "if" is very large -- it will mark China's emergence from an economic and demographic dynamo to a major actor on the world stage, and serious rival to American dominance in the Pacific.
Why is the Beijing agreement different from the worthless "Agreed Framework" Bill Clinton signed in 1994 and North Korea violated (we now know) from the very first day? That agreement was bilateral. This one is six-party, but the major player is China.
China conspicuously made itself the locus of the conference and its host. Its vice foreign minister declared that "North Korea committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning at an early date to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty." If China can succeed where the United States failed miserably in solving the knottiest problem in the Pacific, China will have emerged. That means a lot for China. It has a large stake in this agreement.
Moreover, China controls 30 percent of the food and at least 70 percent of the fuel going into North Korea. That is leverage. The question is why China has decided to use it now.
Until now China had been content to allow North Korea to putter along with its threats, bluster, promises and violations. This served a useful purpose for China in that it was a distraction to the United States, a thorn in its side. Nor were the Chinese in a particular mood to jeopardize the stability of a useful client state.
If this new agreement bears fruit, it will be because China has recalculated its interests, by first deciding that if these negotiations go nowhere and North Korea remains nuclear, it is only a matter of time before Japan goes nuclear, too. A nuclear Japan is China's ultimate nightmare.
Second, the usefulness of North Korea as a thorn in the side of the United States may have diminished. America has thorns aplenty, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Venezuela, to say nothing of its Katrina-related domestic problems.
Third and perhaps most important, this was less a crisis than an opportunity. China has spent the past decade trying to translate its economic power into geopolitical power to make itself the arbiter of Asian affairs. It has established several regional organizations with Asian neighbors (ASEAN Plus Three, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, East Asian Summit) that pointedly exclude the United States. Its major ambition is to displace America as the major Pacific power. At which point, specific and smaller objectives, such as the absorption of Taiwan and the extension of oil rights to waters claimed by weaker neighbors, become infinitely more possible.
By succeeding at denuclearizing Pyongyang, China can demonstrate that the road to getting things done in Asia runs through Beijing. It will have shown its neighbors that the future lies in association with China, with or without the United States.
For this to happen, however, the declaration of principles has to translate into actual dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program. The declaration itself is problematic. It leaves ambiguous the fate of the uranium enrichment program, which North Korea admitted to in 2002 and now claims does not exist.
Success is also contingent on the North Koreans agreeing to postpone, at U.S. insistence, talks about a new light-water nuclear reactor until after it has dismantled its nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities. Yet, within a day after the declaration of principles, Pyongyang issued a statement directly contradicting this and saying that nothing will occur unless it gets the light-water reactors right away.
China is the only country that can force North Korea to give way. China will do so if it decides that this is its Portsmouth moment. That would be a blessing, but not unalloyed. It would solve the most acute and dangerous problem in the Pacific -- nuclear weapons in the hands of the half-mad Caligula that is Kim Jong Il -- at the warranted but still significant cost of seeing our principal rival in the Pacific rise from its slumber.
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If the deal to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons program holds, then China -- the nation that brokered it -- will be a serious rival to America's dominance in the Pacific.
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Ron Nessen Reports on the Idea Industry
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The debate among think tanks continues over the economic impact of Hurricane Katrina, and of the damage likely to be inflicted by Hurricane Rita.
The latest think tank to offer an analysis is the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, whose bottom line conclusion is that the economy will not need any special stimulation because reconstruction of the affected areas will provide plenty of stimulation.
Citing the Congressional Budget Office, investment companies, and assorted economists, the left-of-center think tank forecasts a modest economic slowdown over the next few months due to the hurricanes, followed by a “substantial economic rebound.”
In fact, according to a paper from the Center, written by Richard Kogan and Aviva Aron-Dine, the economic stimulation from post-hurricane reconstruction is likely to result in faster economic growth in 2006 than would have occurred had there been no hurricanes.
Money spent for reconstruction and relief has a very high “bang for the buck,” according to the Center, producing significant economic activity.
The think tank paper cites the Federal Reserve Board’s decision on Tuesday to continue raising interest rates as evidence that the central bankers do not anticipate an economic slowdown as a result of the hurricanes and do not believe the economy needs a jolt of stimulation.
The paper is especially outspoken in its opposition to depreciation tax cuts and other investment incentives to business and corporations, calling them risky and ill-advised. The think tank says such a stimulus package most likely would be loaded up with benefits for special interests not directly harmed by the hurricane, would add to the federal budget deficit, and could end up becoming permanent.
These conclusions suggest that the Center has allowed its generally liberal orientation to influence its recommendations -- admittedly a failing of think tanks from one end of the political spectrum to the other.
By Ron Nessen | September 23, 2005; 05:00 AM ET | Category: Domestic Policy Previous: Social Security Handles Katrina | Main Index | Next: Poor Prospects for Germany
Opposition to unnecessary government micro managing of the economy, to additional tax cuts in a time of huge, foreign financed deficits, and to tax benefits for special interests reveals a Liberal orientation? Was FDR a liberal because following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he raised taxes?
Posted by: S.Pruett | Sep 23, 2005 4:16:03 PM | Permalink
I have to agree that all the money of at least $200 billion intended to spend as relief effort and rebuilding New orleans and Gulf Coast would provide plenty of cash to stimulate the local economy. The huge project of housing is definitely positive for the growth of economy as well. The slow down of economy in late 2005 is only temporary due to disasters of Katrina and Rita. The economy will recover significantly in 2006, although our budget deficit may go through the roof and our national debt will go sky high. Bush will just have to worry about them later.
Posted by: J.Lee | Sep 23, 2005 5:52:47 PM | Permalink
My question relates to who will profit from the rebuilding efforts in the Gulf region? Will the local builders and skilled trades people be able to help with the effort or will only the well connected big conglomorates such as Haliburton be allowed to get a share of the rebuilding contracts? Also, I personally feel much more comfortable that large sums of public moneys are being spent in this country to build up an area then to see our tax dollars being massively dumped into the sands of Iraq (with no end in sight).
Posted by: Birddog08 | Sep 23, 2005 6:36:27 PM | Permalink
Posted by: Travis Thomas | Sep 23, 2005 6:44:51 PM | Permalink
You dismiss their recommendations as "liberal" and end the opinion piece, offering no counter to their logic? Admittedly, a failing of opinion piece writers from one end of the political spectrum to the other.
Posted by: carlos | Sep 23, 2005 9:22:38 PM | Permalink
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The latest news and commentary on developments in think tanks and policy institutes. Visit www.washingtonpost.com/opinions.
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At Nursing Home, Katrina Dealt Only the First Blow
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NEW ORLEANS -- As Hurricane Katrina swirled closer, the elderly nuns who were among the patients at Lafon Nursing Home of the Holy Family packed their medicine and emergency supplies in preparation for evacuation. A sign-out sheet at the nursing home's front desk recorded their departures on the morning of Aug. 27. Sister Paulette signed out at 7:24 a.m., Sister DeSalle at 7:25, Sister Trahan at 7:27, Sisters Jolivete and Miriam at 7:30 and Sister Brinkley at 7:32.
Across the street, 60 more nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family were also evacuating the convent where they lived, under instructions from their mother superior.
But at Lafon, the nursing home run by the order, more than 100 other elderly patients stayed where they were. Sister Augustine McDaniel, the nursing home's administrator, had weathered other hurricanes in her 68 years and decided that she -- and the patients in her care -- would tough this one out, too.
Faced with moving her fragile patients on jammed roadways, or keeping them at Lafon, a sturdy, low brick building that had survived other hurricanes, McDaniel decided her staff and patients would be better off staying. If things got rough, she would move everyone to the second floor.
Taped under receptionist Gloria Williams's desk were "urgent" instructions to recite in case of a hurricane: "Our Father who art in heaven, through the powerful intercession of Lady of Prompt Succor spare us from the harm during the hurricane season."
No prayer could stop Katrina's rushing waters or ease the fatal heat that followed. When rescue workers finally arrived five days later, bodies were found wrapped in bedsheets in the chapel. Originally told 14 had died, officials eventually recovered 22 corpses.
Three weeks later, Lafon is being investigated by Louisiana's attorney general, along with other nursing homes where people died after a failure to evacuate. The state has charged the owners of one home -- St. Rita's -- with 34 counts of negligent homicide after corpses were found floating in brown storm water. Of about 60 nursing homes affected by Katrina, only 21 evacuated before the storm, according to a list compiled by the Louisiana Nursing Home Association.
McDaniel and the other nuns on the staff have been advised by their attorney not to talk about the ordeal. The story of what happened at this New Orleans nursing home -- pieced together from dozens of interviews with employees and patients, family members of patients, and rescuers -- defies easy characterization.
Those stranded inside watched McDaniel and her staff perform with desperate heroics. When countless rescuers were told of the dire situation inside Lafon and none came to help, employees resorted to looting a Family Dollar for peroxide, alcohol wipes and clothes. A savior finally appeared in a red Ford Explorer towing a boat.
But for children and other family members who had entrusted their parents and elderly relatives to the Sisters of the Holy Family, there is confusion and anger. "I know it's a herculean effort to evacuate people from a nursing home," said Judith Heikes, who finally located her 91-year-old mother in Nashville after she was evacuated. "It would have been traumatic on patients. But they made too conservative of a judgment. And that is putting the best spin on it."
Berita Leonard still has not located her 85-year-old father. "I tried to please my father in every way," says Leonard. "He loved the nuns. But if he is deceased, he did not deserve to die this way."
Sister Augustine McDaniel ran a tight ship. She wasn't shy about lecturing employees who showed signs of sloppiness, asking one delinquent staffer to write an essay about why she wanted to keep her job. A stocky woman with graying hair, McDaniel was a constant figure in the hallways, greeting visiting family members by name. Lafon had a waiting list and a rich history in New Orleans, run by an order of black nuns, Sisters of the Holy Family.
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NEW ORLEANS -- As Hurricane Katrina swirled closer, the elderly nuns who were among the patients at Lafon Nursing Home of the Holy Family packed their medicine and emergency supplies in preparation for evacuation. A sign-out sheet at the nursing home's front desk recorded their departures on the...
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Housing the Displaced Is Rife With Delays
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Nearly four weeks after Hurricane Katrina displaced more Americans from their homes than any event in at least 60 years, efforts to find housing for 200,000 families from the devastated Gulf Coast are getting bogged down, according to federal, state and private sector officials.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials complain of a drastic shortage of sites suitable to state and local officials for the huge trailer parks that FEMA hopes to establish for evacuees. Local and parish leaders say FEMA's plans to supply the trailer parks with water, sewer, electricity and other services are haphazard or nonexistent, and the encampments -- some of which could include 15,000 units -- are bigger than any the agency has ever established.
Builders of manufactured housing say red tape has bottlenecked contract orders, which may take as long as 12 months to fill. Congress is considering a new program to offer housing vouchers to the displaced. Meanwhile, planners from Baton Rouge, La., to Washington fear there is no government-wide housing strategy, and no one is certain how many displaced families will return to the Gulf Coast.
In the confusion, White House planners are weighing in, according to agencies involved in the talks. But delays are compounding what some housing advocates call a slow-motion replay of the bureaucratic divisions that crippled the emergency response for days after Katrina hit.
"We seem to be in this new state of chaos," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "Nobody's on message, because everybody's got their own message."
In New Orleans last week, President Bush vowed to clear shelters by mid-October. "We will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes" to help rebuild the region, Bush said.
Huge amounts of federal money are already flowing. Congress has approved $23 billion for temporary housing and individual relief aid.
Authorities say they are losing a race against time to provide temporary housing for the months or years it will take to rebuild New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities.
The task is enormous. Federal officials told Congress on Sept. 8 that as many as 1 million people were displaced by the storm and 450,000 families were homeless, figures that echo assumptions in a FEMA hurricane planning exercise last year.
In reality, the numbers are far more murky. FEMA now estimates that 300,000 families are homeless, and 200,000 will require government housing. But the manufactured housing industry says it will take six months to build 40,000 trailers. Of 600 trailer sites proposed so far, only 5 percent have ready access to water, sewer, power and other services.
On Tuesday, 22 days after Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast, aides to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) asked FEMA to move as many as 50,000 people from shelters into hotels and motels for as many as 90 days. The stop-gap measure is needed to meet Bush's goal while officials debate how and where to establish trailer cities -- or other options for evacuees -- and who will pay for them, said Jerry Jones, state director of facilities and planning.
"We just don't have the time to develop new temporary housing communities," Jones said. "We need to get them out of these shelters. . . . We don't want to just warehouse our people."
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Katrina's Aftermath Raises Immigration Issues
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WASHINGTON -- When President Bush pledged last week that the U.S. Gulf Coast would become "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen,'' he suggested that an unprecedented investment of billions of federal dollars would transform the region not only physically, but socially.
Bush said that "as many jobs as possible should go to the men and women who live in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.'' Indeed, rebuilding the region -- its levees, roads, energy grids, homes -- is to become the work of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
So far, however, the government has acted in ways that would seem to encourage a different segment of the U.S. population to do this work. On Sept. 8, Bush issued an executive order lifting the Davis-Bacon Act mandating that construction workers on federal contracts be paid at least the average wage in the region. The decision was followed days later by a Homeland Security Department announcement that it will not apply sanctions toward employers who hire people unable to provide proper documentation.
This could turn Katrina's aftermath into an immigration issue. In recent years, the U.S. construction industry has become a magnet for Latino immigrants, much more than for any other racial or ethnic group in this country. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, foreign-born Latino workers accounted for 40 percent of the total growth of employment in the construction trades last year. Before Katrina, Hispanics represented only 2 percent of the labor force in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi but held 5 percent of construction jobs, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
What's more, according to Pew, of the total Hispanic immigrants working in construction last year, nearly two-thirds were "unauthorized.'' Labor specialists argue that these "unauthorized'' -- undocumented or illegal -- immigrants are the very ones willing to work for less than prevailing wages and worse than average conditions, particularly if they are not asked for documentation.
The suspension of Davis-Bacon rules and proper documentation requirements have been justified by the government as ways to lower federal costs, accelerate reconstruction and facilitate the hiring of Katrina victims who lost everything including their documents.
Yet, Latino and immigrant advocacy groups say the word is out and immigrants are on the move. There is a lot of work to be had on the Gulf Coast. Spanish-language media and blogs report that U.S. cleaning companies are quickly hiring Latinos, no questions asked.
Some members of Congress promise to make the recovery effort an opportunity to implement ideas such as education vouchers and tax incentives for business investment. Bush himself has called for the creation of a "Gulf Opportunity Zone'' within which the government would provide incentives for entrepreneurs to create jobs and opportunity to "break the cycle of poverty.''
Interestingly, no one has mentioned the disaster as an opportunity to address illegal immigration. Ever since 2001, Bush has been talking on and off about the need for a temporary worker program to provide legal means to ``match willing workers with willing employers.'' For various reasons, his proposal to do that has not moved forward. And some in Congress have argued that Katrina will further postpone it.
The more cynical in this country are convinced that the lack of action on immigration so far is easily explained: rich and powerful employers benefit from the status quo. The government's actions after Katrina seem to further this view.
Katrina exposed how federal, state and local authorities can be overwhelmed by natural disasters. Immigration is not all that different. For years, policymakers at all levels have been struggling with the social consequences of hundreds of thousands of undocumented men and women living in fear of the authorities and turning to government only as a last resort. Border states in particular have felt so overwhelmed that recently the governors of Arizona and New Mexico declared states of emergency along their borders with Mexico.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, Katrina wiped out more than 400,000 jobs. Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at EPI, calculated that the reconstruction price tag of $200 billion plus would create between 400,000 and 500,000 jobs.
Some may think that Katrina victims will fill the vacancies. But it may not be that simple. Immigrants, many of them illegal, are also likely to play a large role in the efforts to rebuild. These illegal workers, in turn, are likely to place extra burdens on state and local authorities and perhaps exacerbate poverty in this already depressed region.
Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.
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WASHINGTON -- When President Bush pledged last week that the U.S. Gulf Coast would become "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen,'' he suggested that an unprecedented investment of billions of federal dollars would transform the region not only physically, but socially.
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Sufjan Stevens's Musical States of Mind
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AFTER 2003's "Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State" earned critical raves for literate and kaleidoscopic chamber-pop that explored the history and character of his home state, Sufjan Stevens announced a bold plan: to record an album for each and every one of the United States.
Equal parts whim, impulse, creative challenge and marketing ploy, such a project probably seemed like a good idea at the time . . . assuming the then-28-year-old Stevens lived a good, long life and never took vacations except, possibly, to as-yet-unwritten-about states.
"I may regret that," Stevens admitted recently from his Brooklyn home, without any obvious regret, "but it was probably necessary for me to acknowledge and put into words my intentions and my propositions. I think sometimes it's better for us to do that, even if it's detrimental.
"It's still kind of a mysterious thing to me, and I have no idea what it means," he says of what has been dubbed the 50 States Project. "We kind of make plans and goals by suspending our imagination, not really knowing what's going to happen next. I don't think it devalues the goal of the project or the nature of it. It is what it is."
What it is now is two albums down, thanks to the July release of "Illinois," an ode to the Prairie State that ranks No. 1 at Metacritic.com, a Web site that calculates an album's critical stature based on a wide sampling of reviews from mainstream and alternative media. Last year's champion was Brian Wilson's "Smile," and with its lush and intricate arrangements, quirky instrumentation, gorgeous melodies and conceptual ambition, "Illinois" has provoked comparisons to Wilson's "Pet Sounds" and "Smile," as well as to Bob Dylan, Walt Whitman and, for the nu-hipsters, Iron & Wine and the Arcade Fire.
Though he hired a string section and choir, Stevens did most of the playing on the album, overdubbing about 20 instruments, including oboe (the one instrument he has seriously trained on), piano, guitar, banjo, saxophone, accordion, glockenspiel, recorder and such percussion tools as tambourine and sleigh bells.
Where "Michigan" reflected a lifetime of homegrown memories and impressions -- Stevens was born in Detroit and grew up there and in Alanson, a small lumber town in northern Michigan -- "Illinois" resulted from extensive research, four months' worth before the first song was written. Raw materials included Saul Bellow's novels, Carl Sandburg's poems, biographies of historical figures, scholarly studies of small towns and frontier life, accounts of industrial development and old newspapers, as well as stories and anecdotes from friends who have lived there.
The 22-track, 74-minute album is replete with place names (Chicago, Decatur, Peoria, Highland Falls), populated by folks as disparate as Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Sandburg, Frank Lloyd Wright and serial killer John Wayne Gacy. There's even room for Superman in "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts," though his appearance on the album's cover created a small problem for Stevens's self-owned label, Asthmatic Kitty. Apparently, no one thought to get clearance from DC Comics to use a drawing of the famously trademarked figure, necessitating a cover change after the first run (and making that first run an instant collector's item).
Neither "Michigan" nor "Illinois" are likely to be included in chamber of commerce tote bags: They're not booster-style travelogues or "Come to . . . " seductions, instead reflecting what Stevens has called "the uneven textures of American life." One of "Illinois' " key tracks is the mini-symphony "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!," about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing in America and valorized American technology and commerce. It becomes a bittersweet rumination on the effects of industrialism in which Stevens sings, "All great intentions / Get covered with the imitations /Oh god of progress / Have you degraded or forgot us?"
According to Stevens, "industrialism taught us that anything can be mechanized and that there's a value of efficiency and economy in packaging to reach the widest possible audience and get the greatest yield from that. So many elements in our culture have been conditioned by that standard, and music is no different. The music industry has sort of systemized song and art in a real mechanized way, and while it's sad that the industry is in decline because of the Internet and downloading, it's exciting because it's empowering songwriters with a particular vision and voice, creating a whole new level of interest for unique songwriting."
Stevens is talking about such peers as Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons, whose debut album recently won Britain's Mercury Music Prize). They've been lumped into a movement, the avant-folk/acid-folk scene that Wire magazine last year dubbed "New Weird America." The one obvious commonality: They're from all over the map, geographically and musically.
Stevens -- his first name, Persian and pronounced "Soof-yahn," was bestowed by the leader of a spiritual sect his parents belonged to when he was born -- grew up on a classical path, studying oboe early and long, and teaching himself piano, on which he wrote what he calls "small concerti."
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AFTER 2003's "Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State" earned critical raves for literate and kaleidoscopic chamber-pop that explored the history and character of his home state, Sufjan Stevens announced a bold plan: to record an album for each and every one of the United States.
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On TV
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Post TV Columnist Lisa de Moraes takes a look at what's on the tube in a fast-paced give and take about reality, non-reality, cable and you name it.
Lisa was online Friday, Sept. 23, at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the latest on TV.
De Moraes has written "The TV Column" for The Post since 1998. She served as the TV editor for the entertainment industry trade publication the "Hollywood Reporter" for almost a decade.
washingtonpost.com: This week in The TV Column: Martha Stewart, Out of the Can And Into the Tank.
'Earl's' First Good Deed: Better Numbers for NBC.
Emmy Wins and a Thwarted 'Comeback'.
The Emmy Math, All Pluses.
Primetime Emmys Save the Best for First.
Lisa de Moraes: Hi. This morning's news: UPN's "Everybody Hates Chris" beat NBC's revamped "Joey" debut, John O'Hurley beat daytime hussy Kelly Monaco in "Dancing with the Stars" dance-off, and Mandy Patinkin's new show "Criminal Minds" beat "ER" season debut. All good.....
Arlington, Va.: They've cancelled Head Cases after two weeks and, in spite of Chris O'Donnell, it was unwatchable. But how do you think that people make up their minds not watch something, not even sampling it? Some shows one with very few people trying it. Is this something to give a sense that the suits don't have a clue as to what will cause an audience to find a show?
Lisa de Moraes: Hooray --I was right about something!...I forecast on Tony Kornheiser's radio show that "Head Cases" would be first show pulled and imagine my surprise when it turned out to be true -- that hardly ever happens. The name of the game these days is "timeslot" and "marketing." Okay, that's two names of the game. Fox gave "Head Cases" one of its toughest time periods -- Wednesday at 9 p.m. (opposite "Lost" and, this week a rerun of "CSI" season finale directed by Quentin Tarantino). Plus, all of the networks seem to be taking a lesson from ABC's success last season focusing virtually all its marketing and promo resources on just three or so its many new series. "Head Cases" hardly got any help in on that score. It was doomed from the start....
Washington, D.C.: Love your insight into the TV biz.
I'm ready for Arrested Development to start on Fox on Monday at 8:00 (everyone please watch). How well does it have to do to not get yanked this season? Now that it's in its third year will keeping last year's ratings be enough or does it have to show signs that it will still improve?
Lisa de Moraes: Sorry pookie, but "Arrested Development" already debuted, last Monday at 8,p.m. and it only clocked 4.6 million viewers. It's so fortunate that it won a couple of glamour Emmys the night before -- like best writing in a sitcom. But unless something else comes along to help it -- DVD sales do Dave Chappelle-esque numbers, becomes favorite U.S. sitcom in all of Europe, all 10 people who are watching make $2 million or more a year which sends advertisers into cardiac arrest, one of the cast members marries Paris Hilton, etc. -- I don't see this show lasting too much longer. Maybe just long enough to amass enough episodes for syndication... I think that's one more season beyond this. Okay, maybe it's not so bleak...
Washington, D.C.: I have a confession to make --- I started watching Survivor. Sure, I'm about six seasons late. I've discovered it's full of people to yell at for being really, really dumb. (I'm looking at you Gary.) Is this bad? I used to scorn reality TV, now I'm a fan.
Lisa de Moraes: Welcome to our hell! We can't help loving reality TV.
I think we can both agree that the best show of the past decade was MTV's Boiling Points. Now that was high comedy.
Lisa de Moraes: Nope. Keen Eddie.....
Arlington, Va.: You're back! Saw Everyone Hates Chris last night...absolutely loved it! I can't tell you how good it is to see Joey fail miserably.
Lisa de Moraes: "Joey's" overhaul does not seem to have helped much...That ending where he and Neighbor-chick have their date before sex they already had made him seem like a super-rat. It was a very bad idea and out of character for Joey Tribiani. I despair for the show....
Richmond, Va.: Is it just me or is the size of The Donald's waistline starting to match the size of his ego.
Lisa de Moraes: I think maybe he should have checked out that Triple XXX Threat Bally's workout they were offering...still, he was, as usual, one of the most entertaining people in primetime....
I read a favorable review of Martha Stewart's new shows, yet the ratings for The Apprentice were dismal. Could this have been related to the 8 p.m. timeslot? I myself couldn't watch it because with two young children, 8 p.m. is simply a timeslot I can't commit to at all.
Could it be that her audience in general just can't tune in at 8 p.m.?
Lisa de Moraes: I'm told that audience research indicated -- doesn't that sound important? -- there was "high awareness" for the show, but low "intent to view." In other words, everybody knew about the show, but not that many people wanted to watch. I think the press went bonkers over this show because of Martha's stint at camp cupcake....
washingtonpost.com: Sunday's TV Column: Female Characters, Made To Suffer for Our 'Art'.
My Wish: Nothing looks cheesier than Three Wishes. Please tell me this show will be as terrible as I hope. And I'm certain it will be a big hit, which will drive me nuts.
Lisa de Moraes: It will be a big hit. It will drive you nuts. it will make you weep...
Silver Spring, Md.: Thank you very much for your piece on Sunday regarding violence directed towards women in TV. It's about freakin'' time somebody called the networks to task for this. Simply appalling.
Unfortunately, I'll bet you fifty bucks that within the first 5 episodes of that new show with Gina Davis as CiC, she will come down with some sort of gender specific health condition (breast cancer scare, something with her reproductive organs) Donald Southerland will plan on some evil coalition take over when she signs over her powers, and she'll wake up from anesthesia with everything fine and all her tests negative.
Remember Presidio Med? One of the partners had to have an emergency operation DONE BY HER PARTNERS to save her fertility. This explains why I don't watch broadcast TV anymore. Women are more than the sum of their body parts. I'm a guy and I can't believe I just said that.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Lisa de Moraes: Hey, the producers of all these new dramas that got sold off of their Die Women Die pilot storylines have promised us we will see men as victims of heinous, kinky crimes in the course of the season and I'm taking them at their word. I can't wait for the first castration episode -- sure hope it happens during the November sweep!....
I didn't get home in time to see "Everybody Hates Chris". Did I miss the start of the next great comedy ??
Lisa de Moraes: You betcha...
Denver, Colo.: If Arrested Development on did 4.6 million, then that probably means Kitchen Confidential didn't fare too well either. Too bad, I really enjoyed it.
Lisa de Moraes: 4.3 million. very sad. it's a really fun pilot...
Washington, D.C.: So glad you're back! This is the best chat.
Lisa de Moraes: Hi Mom! (thanks!)
Huh?: I missed the Joey premiere, and I didn't understand your comment about the ending. What happened?
Sadly, I missed the Chris Rock show too -- but I guess we all have to get out of the house sometime!
Lisa de Moraes: I've already forgotten what my comment was. It's one of those days. Actually one of those weeks. NBC promised that this season, in fact in the first episode, Joey would become a film star and would move out of that tacky apartment, lose the nephew roommate, his sister would become less scarily obsessed about her son, etc. ...is that the comment you're referring to? And by all means stay home next Thursday at 8 -- watch "Everybody Hates Chris" to see if the second episode is as good as the first. Get out of the house on Saturday -- there's nothing on that night..
St. Louis, Mo.: I'm a fan of Desperate Housewives like seemingly everyone else. But if that show can be classified as a comedy at the Emmys, anything can.
Shouldn't the award go to an actual comedy like Arrested Development or Scrubs? Or at least the unintentionally hysterical 7th Heaven?
Lisa de Moraes: Yeah, anything, like Ally McBeal, which started this silliness. I actually think "Lost" is at times funnier than "Desperate Housewives." Of course "DH" intends to be funny; "Lost" does not, they just are anyway...
Silver Spring, Md.: "Everybody Hates Chris" looks like a direct knockoff of "Malcolm in the Middle." Am I the only one who feels this way?
Lisa de Moraes: It reminds me more of "The Wonder Years" with that voiceover and all....
Oakton, Va.: Re: "Close to Home": Let me get this straight -- a 27-year old prosecutor with a perfect record? Hah! Handling the highest-profile cases in a major city? Absurd. Yelling strident, preachy soliloquies and retorts at lawyers and cops and judges? Beyond preposterous. If a young ADA was really to yell even once at his/her colleagues and superiors the way this woman does in the show (and this seems to be the theme of the show), he/she would be out on his/her behind in about five minutes. Just how stupid does Bruckheimer think we are? It's no wonder that reality TV is so popular -- standard shows like this one (The Inside, Cold Case), keep asking us to believe that twenty-somethings with fashion-mag looks and wardrobes are in charge of major law enforcement organizations.
Lisa de Moraes: Honey, you need to take a deep breath and let it out slowly while saying in your head, calmly "Every Day in Every Way, I Grow Better and Better." It's called "fiction." It's called "television entertainment programming." Did we all really think surburbia was like Ozzie and Harriet back in the old days when that show was on? Did we all really believe that cops looked like Heather Locklear? Did we all really think there were Klingons out there?
Arlington, Va.: Do you see the family edition of Amazing Race actually working?
Lisa de Moraes: Producers of many reality series are noticing the ratings success of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and are trying to make their shows less ugly and more "aspirational" like "Home Edition." Hence "Three Wishes," and family "Amazing Race," not to mention family "Fear Factor," etc....
Washington, D.C.: I enjoyed Criminal Minds last night--despite horrific caging of the victim!--but didn't understand the ending with the gas station clerk. Did I miss something? Overall I thought the show much better than a lot of the other psych-detective shows, like L&O: CI (which often has such lame plots).
Lisa de Moraes: At the beginning of the show, when Mandy Patinkin -- voice of an angel, by the way -- is teaching that class, he is describing a real case he advised some law enforcement types on and said that based on the information they had given him he had cleverly deduced that the murderer probably spoke with a stutter. Payoff came at the end when he went into that gas station store and saw all those snaps on the wall and the guy stuttered while speaking and he realized that this was maybe the murderer they'd been looking for. I'm betting Patinkin survives -- especially since the show opened very well last night -- nearly 20 million viewers, beating the season debut of "ER" (14.3 million) according to early numbers....
Silver Spring, Md.: What, no Emmy questions? All right -- what was your biggest disappointment and your biggest applause moment?
Lisa de Moraes: My biggest disappointment by far was Hugh Laurie not winning the Emmy for best actor in a drama series. James Spader? Paleeze... biggest applause moment was when Tyler James Williams introduced that child from New Orleans and asked him what was his favorite TV show and that adorable kid said it was Spongebob Squarepants and some other show I don't remember with a big smile on his face...That was priceless. I know, my buttons were being pushed, but I loved it all the same...
"Desperate Housewives" tries to be funny?: Come on, really? No way!
Okay, I believe you. But how could it get a nomination for comedy, much less an award? Frankly, "Rescue Me" is both funnier and darker, not to mention better written, better acted, etc.
Lisa de Moraes: Yes, the lines have gotten very blurry.....
Arlington, Va.: Lisa! Welcome back! We've missed you!
O.k., did you see the first episode of "Reunion"?? I had high hopes for the show, since the premise seemed interesting. But I really can't remember the last time I've seen such poorly written, horribly acted schlock. In my book, the biggest disappointment of this young season. Do you agree, or do you have another pick for biggest disappointment?
Lisa de Moraes: Yes, I have not seen such poorly written, horribly acted schlock since, oh, "Melrose Place." You simply have to get over the notion that "poorly written" and "horribly acted" are necessarily bad things if you're going to be a serious student of television. Sometimes, out of "poorly written" and "terribly acted" comes that miracle of the small screen called "an enormous ratings hit."
This is a question I've been saving, but how in the world did Will & Grace get all those Emmy nominations? I can't think of any other show that is so past its prime getting so many nominations, even if it didn't actually win any.
Lisa de Moraes: Weren't about 85 of its nominations for guest acting. It did have a slew of great celebs show up last season to do guest appearances...
Washington, D.C.: I'm a big Jason Lee fan, but am I the only one who thought My Name Is Earl wasn't that great? Maybe it's just those annoying radio commercials where the "zany morning crew" is sitting around raving about the show.
Lisa de Moraes: I'm with you re "zany morning crew." Please dont hold it against "My Name is Earl." The pilot was great, really.
Washington, D.C.: Big fan of that guy from Buffy, but Bones is really awful. The first episode required you to suspend all that you know about personal liberties and, after decades of cop shows and School House Rock, our criminal justice system. Bleeck.
Lisa de Moraes: Okay, you guys are just waaaayyyyyy too literal this afternoon. What's gotten into you? I clearly should not have taken all those weeks off.....
INXS show: This is the first time in a long while I've been able to participate in one of these chats, so apologize if I am raising something that has already been discussed a thousand times.
I turned on this show one night by accident, and was stunned at how good most of the singing was compared with American Idol. Like a million times better. The premise of the show is hokey, but I really enjoyed seeing those kids sing every week. (Would have voted for Marty as the winner though).
This from someone who normally listens to classical music, who cannot identify an INXS song, and did not know how the spell the name of the group until I saw it on the screen. (In fact, maybe I still have it wrong). But it really made Idol look like amateur hour to me, not in a good way. (Though the commentary from the judges is usually more entertaining on Idol). What do you think?
Lisa de Moraes: I think you are right and the judges/producers/whoever is actually picking the contestants on "American Idol" are really really bad....
Silver Spring, Md.: Lisa, In your wonderful opinion, what was the "best show" ever prematurely cancelled. For me, it was Homicide, Life on the Streets, that terrific edgy Baltimore show! And in its place, we got hello, Reality TV! I can honestly say, that I have never seen an episode of Survivor! Go me!
Lisa de Moraes: Hello? -- "Keen Eddie" (see above). Homicide was old by the time it was pulled....
Washington, D.C.: I was shocked at how much I liked "How I met your mother." I only watched it because of Willow, Doogie, and the guy from Freaks and Geeks, but it actually made me laugh. Did it get any ratings at all?
Lisa de Moraes: Built on its "King of Queens" lead-in... I love Doogie Howser Guy in this new show....
Emmy Question: I did not read about in after the show. I am the only one who saw Alan Alda looking like the less than gracious loser? As William Shatner was walking on stage to collect his award, the cameraman did the usual "let's show the gracious losers smile and clap despite having just lost". Alan Alda was very cranky and tore up his speech -- no smiling, no clapping. Not sure if I should be horrified at his lack of class, or applaud him for actually like a real person. Did anyone else catch this great moment?
Lisa de Moraes: I totally missed it. He tore up his speech? Was he trying to be funny?
O.C. Fans, Calif.: My viewing group thinks Mischa Barton might've learned to act over the summer. She seems to suck less than she did last season. Is this possible? Didn't she do some important film with some important director over the summer? Maybe she'll learn to eat during her next film . . .
And sadly, Adam Brody seems less funny. Maybe it is a zero sum game.
Lisa de Moraes: She honed her talent in all those hair color commercials she did over the summer....
Frederick, Md.: You know the ER cast is the weakest it has ever been when half the show is about that trailer trash going off to Bum Bleep, USA to find her kid with the Serbian refugee doctor ..and Maura Tierney's character as a medical genius? Plus, doesn't Sherry Stringfield's Susan have any pride (is she training her replacement or what?)and where is Carrie? Bring back Anthony Edwards, Noah Wylie, Clooney, and Dr. Benton! All of these new interns are feeb dweebs.
Lisa de Moraes: They are never coming back, dear. Change is good. Except, maybe in this case, but they are doing the best they can with what they have. They did not ask George Clooney, etc. to leave...
Gaithersburg, Md.: So Lisa, you were right about Head Cases being the first casualty of the new season....but that's only because Ghost Whisperer hasn't even premiered yet.........
Lisa de Moraes: Correcto! And I was aware of that when I made my bold prediction... I'm not just another pretty face, you know.
La Mesa, Calif.: Thanks for the chats. Moved out here last November from Bowie, but the online Post keeps me connected.
Can't wait for the new Geena Davis (woof-woof)/Donald Sutherland (hiss-boo) show. Trailers at least looked interesting.
Re the Law and Order series, of which my wife (an attorney, but not criminal law) and I are fans. Both of us wonder if investigators and detectives are given as much leeway---even with defending counsel present---IRL. Rule: we always eliminate any suspect presented in the first 20 minutes...95% of the time the real killer is not one of them.
Lisa de Moraes: This question made my head hurt. Can we just agree to assume for the duration of the TV season that none of the drama series bears any resemblance to the reality of the subject they're covering, whether it's cops, lawyers, doctors, the White House, whatever...
Burke, Va.: Did anyone else have the experience I did trying to vote on Dancing with the Stars? You could vote five times from any phone line. I kept getting the "circuits are busy" message, but got through 4 times. On the 5th try, I was told I had voted my limit. I then voted from my cell phone. After getting through twice, I was told I had voted my limit. Not a major issue in my life, mind you, but sure made me think the fix was in!!
Lisa de Moraes: Who cares -- O'Hurley won!
HBO: Carnival: What happened with HBO's Carnival. I thought it was one of their best series!!!
Lisa de Moraes: Not renewed, just like "The Comeback."
Alexandria, Va.: I'm bummed about HBO not renewing The Comeback. That show was so funny, and I give Lisa Kudrow props for allowing herself to appear as such an embarrassing person. And the parallels between The Comeback and Kathy Griffin's actual reality show were spooky. Lisa has her hairdresser/stylist, who used to style her on her former semi-successful sitcom, not making a style move without him, and so does Kathy have a stylist from when she was on Suddenly Susan, a semi-successful sitcom. Kathy goes home and comments how many fewer people are there to greet her than when she was on her semi-hit sitcom. Lisa goes to the awards show, Kathy is on the red carpet at two awards shows.
Lisa de Moraes: The parallels were uncanny, yes. I think they may have the exact same number of viewers, too...
What's your take on "My name is Earl"? I believe your colleague Tom Shales was not impressed, but I've been hearing good things about it from other places (I missed the preview this week).
Lisa de Moraes: Pilot was terrific. And it got off to a strong start -- more than 15 million viewers which, for a new sitcom on NBC on Tuesday night at 9 is terrific.
Re:Alan Alda: He said on The View this week that it was a joke. I can't believe I just admitted that I watched The View.
Lisa de Moraes: Glad to hear it was a joke. Sounded like a joke. Sorry you watch The View, but somebody has to...
Washington, D.C.: I think Alan Alda was trying to be funny. He had a little smirk on his face as he matter of factly tore up his speech. Surely he knew that the cameras would go to him for a reaction shot after he lost, so maybe he decided to spice things up a bit. I thought it was great...
Lisa de Moraes: When they were reading the winner in best supporting actor in a comedy, Sean Hayes was seen pretending to be asleep. I think all the nominees are very aware by now that the cameras are on them and bless them for trying to be at least a little entertaining. This year's acceptance speeches were so much better than in the past. Only two people -- Arquette from "Medium" and JJ Abrams from "Lost" went into full laundry-list mode. Otherwise, each speech had something interesting or amusing in it...
Washington, D.C.: Did you watch the TV guide network pre-Emmy show or the E! pre-Emmy show? I tried to watch the E! show, but they had some lady sitting next to Kathy Griffin and when Kathy was talking, they'd just show the other woman! And those bubbles they put all the hosts heads in were distracting. The whole pre-show was chaos. I eventually gave up and watched Joan & Mel.
Lisa de Moraes: I was at the office watching on Sunday and, strange as it may sound, the company does not give me access to those networks in my office. We have a very odd television set-up here at The Post; I think it involves paper clips and chewing gum. I am not able to see several networks here in my office -- I can see far more channels at home.
Herndon, Va.: What are the ratings like for HBO's Rome? I'm hoping that it will be back after this season.
Lisa de Moraes: It's already been renewed....
Reston, Va.: HBO didn't renew The Comeback?? I really liked that show and it was nice to see somebody from Friends try something completely different.
Lisa de Moraes: Unfortunately, only about 900,000 people watched the first telecast of the show's final episode. That was pretty much the end....
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: I know it's nitpicky, but the actor who plays Luka Kovac on ER is a Croatian (as is his character). For Balkan people, that's a HUGE difference, considering Serbs and Croats were at war with each other not 10 years ago!
Re: House: Hugh Laurie did not win the Emmy. Why do you think that is?
Lisa de Moraes: Apparently there is no god....
Rockville, Md.: Lisa! So many bad shows, so little time....Isn't the Ghost Whisperer just a remake of that CBS show where the guy got tomorrow's newspaper a day early, with a little Sixth Sense thrown in? The only way that show will be any good is if at some point during the series it becomes possible that Jennifer Love Hewitt doesn't see dead people, but instead is just crazy. Then the series will be about whether or not she is nuts, and the dynamic of people either ignoring her because she seems crazy or listening to her because they want to believe or, well, because she's really pretty.
Lisa de Moraes: I really like your version. I'm going to pass this along to the nice people at CBS....
Re: Emmy Idol: Please tell me why your colleague Tim Page did not do a musical critique of Frederica van Stade singing the theme from "Star Trek" on the Emmys.
Lisa de Moraes: She was robbed! She and Shatner totally blew away the competition on "Emmy Idol" during the Emmy broadcast. It was an inspired performance and they should have won the -- well, whatever it was that the winner won...
Arlington, Va.: How is that the Simpsons only have four fingers and that Bart and Lisa never grow old...does this bother anyone else? Do you remember in the episode where Homer nearly burned down his house. Homer and God were talking and Homer said he couldn't wait until he got into heaven..and God said "what, you can't wait another six days?" And then the show came back on the next week. Talk about suspending reality...
Lisa de Moraes: wow, now you're really scaring me...it's a cartoon. Of course you suspend reality. They're just little drawings. I want you all to talk to your therapists this week about the trouble you're having separating real life from television. We'll try again next week. Bye!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Post TV Columnist Lisa de Moraes takes a look at what's on TV in a fast-paced give-and-take about reality, non-reality, cable and everything else that's on the tube.
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Katrina Swells Ranks of Jobless
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Hurricane Katrina's initial toll on the U.S. economy is beginning to add up, with a series of reports showing a jump in new claims for unemployment insurance benefits, plunging consumer confidence and lost industrial production.
The number of Katrina victims who have filed claims for unemployment insurance surged last week and appears headed higher as workers continue reporting storm-related job losses in seven states, the U.S. Labor Department reported yesterday.
There were 103,000 Katrina-related new jobless claims last week, pushing the total to 214,000, said department spokesman Subri Raman.
Most of those claims were filed by residents of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. But the hurricane also was blamed for an unspecified number of new jobless claims filed last week in Georgia, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky, the Labor Department said.
The total should climb in coming weeks by as much as 200,000 if the Congressional Budget Office was correct in estimating that the storm at least temporarily wiped out about 400,000 jobs.
State labor agencies also expect the numbers to keep rising, based on the crowds in their offices and the delays on their jammed telephone lines.
Conditions in Louisiana's job offices are "improving, but there are still some problems with the volume" of people trying to file claims, said Edward Pratt, spokesman for the state's Department of Labor. "We are encouraging people to be patient because we have so many people to deal with."
The state is urging its jobless residents, particularly those out of state, to file online, he said.
By Tuesday, 161,525 Louisiana residents had applied for unemployment insurance in the four weeks after Katrina hit. In comparison, 193,000 filed in all of 2004, Pratt said.
The U.S. Labor Department has provided a combined $30.8 million in federal grants to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to expand their capacity to process jobless claims and speed the payment of unemployment benefits to hurricane victims.
The Labor Department also has extended the usual 30-day deadline for filing unemployment claims to Nov. 30 for workers left jobless by Katrina. And it has extended the deadline for providing proof of past employment and wages to 90 days from the usual 21 days after a claim is filed.
Separately, consumer sentiment plummeted after Hurricane Katrina to its lowest level since 1992 while expectations of higher inflation rose, according to a University of Michigan survey released last week.
The storm also sharply reduced companies' production of oil, gasoline, natural gas and industrial chemicals in the Gulf Coast region at the end of August, according to a Federal Reserve report released last week.
Fed officials said in a statement Tuesday that the storm should cause no more than a temporary setback to the economy.
Corporate chief executives largely shared the Fed's view, according to a survey last week by the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs. However, the storm had prompted many companies to lower expectations for sales, hiring and investment in new plants and equipment in coming months.
"The wider impact of Hurricane Katrina on the national economy is now becoming evident and none of it is pretty," said Paul Ashworth, senior international economist for Capital Economics Ltd., in an analysis yesterday.
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Complete Coverage on Hurricane Katrina including video, photos and blogs. Get up-to-date news on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, news from New Orleans and more.
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Rewrite of Endangered Species Law Approved
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Setting the stage for the most sweeping restructuring of endangered species protections in three decades, the House Resources Committee yesterday approved legislation that would strengthen the hand of private property owners and make it harder for federal officials to set aside large swaths of habitat for imperiled plants and animals.
Committee Chairman Richard W. Pombo (R-Calif.), who has sought to revamp the Endangered Species Act for more than a decade, said the bill would make the landmark 32-year-old law more effective.
"The whole underlying premise of what we're trying to do is recover species," Pombo said, adding that his measure would ensure "individual property owners are not forced to shoulder the financial burden of conserving endangered species for all Americans."
GOP leaders are eager to move the bill and it is expected to pass by a comfortable margin next week. The question remains whether Senate Republicans, who have begun hearings on the issue but have yet to introduce legislation, can pass a bill that would allow the two chambers to reach a compromise next year.
Many Democrats, as well as some Republicans and an array of environmental groups, have voiced concern about Pombo's measure and suggested it would not pass as it now stands.
The measure, which the panel approved 26 to 12 with eight Democrats voting aye, would require the government to compensate landowners if it declared some of their property off-limits to development to protect federally listed species, and to decide such cases within 180 days.
Real estate developers and property owners have hailed the bill as a long overdue rebalancing of the law, while environmentalists slammed it as undermining critical protections. Critics of the current law note that only a handful of the roughly 1,800 plants and animals listed over the past 30 years have fully recovered, while supporters counter that an equally small number have gone extinct during that period.
"Even schoolchildren know you can't protect plants and animals if you don't protect the places where they live," said Susan Holmes, senior legislative representative at Earthjustice, an advocacy group.
But Chuck Cushman, executive director of the American Land Rights Association, of Battleground, Wash., said yesterday's action showed that private property owners are winning the political argument over endangered species.
The bill authorizes federal grants for property owners who voluntarily take steps to protect species, and would pay them for lost business profits on land the government sets aside for endangered and threatened plants and animals. It also would allow the interior secretary to set a scientific standard for declaring a species threatened or endangered, rather than asking outside scientists to make judgments on a case-by-case basis.
"I'm optimistic that enough people will realize after 31 years, the failure rate [of species recovery] can't be tolerated, and there needs to be some changes," Cushman said.
Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee (R-R.I.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee charged with overseeing endangered species law, said yesterday he will not decide how to proceed until he hears back from an advisory group of environmentalists, landowners and government officials meeting in Keystone, Colo.
The House, Chafee said, "is moving quickly," adding that once the Keystone group reports to the Senate in 2006, he would be comfortable drafting a bill. Offering financial incentives to landowners will be key, he added. "If you care about protecting private property rights and protecting species, it's going to revolve around funding issues," Chafee said.
Pombo went out of his way yesterday to accommodate some Democrats' amendments during the committee's deliberations, though many remained skeptical because of the speeded-up timetable. The details of Pombo's bill only became public on Monday.
When the chairman accepted an amendment by Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) restoring language that Pombo had deleted from the current law, the Democrat remarked, "I've spent seven years trying to figure out how to get Pombo to yield on an amendment, and that moment has arrived," prompting laughter from his colleagues.
Still, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) said he could not back Pombo's proposal without scrutinizing the legislative language in detail.
"We've got to know exactly what we're doing," Miller said. "This is a big deal."
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The House Resources Committee approves legislation that would strengthen the hand of private property owners and make it harder for federal officials to set aside habitat for imperiled plants and animals.
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Area's Aridity Rises To Level of Drought
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The long dry stretch in the Washington area officially was classified as a moderate drought yesterday, confirming what gardeners, umbrella peddlers and anyone with a lawn has known for weeks.
A map produced by the U.S. Drought Monitor, a Nebraska-based consortium of academics and federal agencies, was upgraded to show the mid-Atlantic region in the lowest of its four drought categories. Until yesterday, the Washington area had been classified one notch lower, as abnormally dry.
The area's last significant rain was four weeks ago, when a quarter-inch fell Aug. 27 and again the day after. In September, the precipitation has been barely perceptible: only 0.01 of an inch, on Sept. 15.
Virginia and Maryland officials said there was no cause for alarm. Moderate droughts are not that unusual, occurring every six years on average and particularly in autumn. The first day of fall was yesterday.
But in the fall, water demand routinely lessens as farmers irrigate less often and trees lose their leaves.
"Had this occurred in mid-June to mid-August, it would be much more serious than it is now," said Patrick Michaels, a Virginia state climatologist.
Terry Wagner, head of a Virginia drought monitoring task force, said that after three years of above-normal rainfall in the region, the drought's impact should be minimal. Such measures as stream flows, groundwater levels and reservoir levels are adequate, he said. The main concern is the threat of more wildfires in the fall, Wagner said.
"We're nowhere near calling for voluntary conservation," he said. "We're looking more closely at individual areas, and based on what we find, we'd start a public education process even before that."
Maryland officials said that though the weather has been drier than usual, no related problems have been reported.
Richard McIntyre, a spokesman for the state Department of the Environment, said he has heard some farmers say the only reason they are able to make money this year is because they have been watering more than usual.
Norman Bennett, a federal Agriculture Department official in Maryland, said some soybeans from the season's second crop might not develop fully because of the lack of rain. Because enough rain fell early in the summer, though, other crops have not been affected, he said.
"We're not even calling it a drought yet, just sort of a dry spell," he said. "There are some obvious signs. Homeowners just have to look at their lawns, and some trees are starting to drop their leaves already. But it's probably late enough in the season not to have a disastrous effect."
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The long dry stretch in the Washington area officially was classified as a moderate drought yesterday, confirming what gardeners, umbrella peddlers and anyone with a lawn has known for weeks.
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Preparing for Hurricane Rita
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Dr. Donna Gaffney , an associate professor of Nursing at Seton Hall University and an expert in crisis preparedness for hospitals and health care workers, was online Friday, Sept. 23, at 2 p.m. ET to address how hospitals should improve their responses to all hazards and how the "average person" can best prepare themselves to get the assistance and care they need in a crisis. Gaffney is also is coordinating an effort to send Seton Hall student nurses to the "front lines" as Red Cross relief workers.
washingtonpost.com: Some useful Web sites: Key Facts About Hurricane Readiness
Prevent Illness after a Hurricane
Laurel, Md.: The twin hurricanes have brought out people's desire to help and their fear of rising prices; prompting many to want to assist in any way they can except financially.
Is there much an average citizen can do to assist in an emergency except donate money or maybe blood?
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Hello Laurel, MD...your question is an example of the great compassion and concern that people are feeling for those affected by Hurricane Katrina (and now Rita). The Red Cross has local chapters all over the country in many communities. In addition to monetary donations they need people to help prepare for disaster response. You can call your local chapter and ask how you can offer your time and talent, they will be most appreciative. In addition to the Red Cross, there are other groups as well.
Arlington, Va.: I think it's a good idea to have a backpack filled with items you need in case you have to leave your home immediately (like in less than five minutes). In fact, I just packed one last night and it sits in my front closet. What items do you think should be in this backpack?
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Hello Arlington (and a prepared Arlington, I might add). This is a great question and one that everyone should be thinking about. The Web sites I have posted on this chat room are excellent resources for you. These "go bags" can be filled with such items as prescriptions, important papers (insurance cards, etc). Here are some ideas from the CDC, as you can see it may take more than a backpack!
- Several clean containers for water, large enough for a 3-5 day supply of water (about five gallons for each person).
- A 3-5 day supply of non-perishable food.
- A first aid kit and manual.
- A battery-powered radio, flashlights, and extra batteries.
- Sleeping bags or extra blankets.
- Water-purifying supplies, such as chlorine or iodine tablets or unscented, ordinary household chlorine bleach.
- Prescription medicines and special medical needs.
- Baby food and/or prepared formula, diapers, and other baby supplies.
- Disposable cleaning cloths, such as "baby wipes" for the whole family to use in case bathing facilities are not available.
- Personal hygiene supplies, such as soap, toothpaste, sanitary napkins, etc.
Brooklyn, N.Y.: Hi Dr. Gaffney!
If we can't adequately evacuate a city with a few days warning (and the images of a previous storm still fresh in everyones' heads), how can we be at all confident that any of our emergency evacuation plans would work for something more surprising (earthquake, terrorist attack)? Are we doomed to continually repeat mistakes, no matter who is in charge at the local, state or federal level?
I am not one prone to knee-jerk reactions, but I have to admit that right now I am more scared than I've been since 9/11/01, seeing that we've learned nothing when it comes to emergency planning and execution. Are my fears unfounded? Please tell me they are and why.
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Hi Brooklyn..
Your question is probably on everyone's mind. Remember that many of the thoughts and reactions we are feeling in these past few weeks are due to our "witnessing" these events in our living rooms, it is natural to feel "vulnerable" when all we see are the problems. Yet, we also need to consider the tremendous efforts and work that is being done that we are not hearing about.
Vienna, Va.: Is the proposed rule about mandatory evacuation of pets a joke? I can imagine a cartoon where two army rescuers in a helicopter are shouting down to someone stranded in a flooded area saying: "Sorry, there is no room. Ms. Johnson had to bring her cats"
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Hello Vienna-
The question about pets tugs at our heartstrings, but the best way to answer that question and any others that concern animals is to call your local government office (town hall, etc) they will connect you with the people that can best advise you. There are also good Web sites for the SPCA and the HSUS(Human Society of the US).
washingtonpost.com: Emergency Plans and Supply Kits.
Fairfax, Va.: Watching the Rita evacuation is scary. It's is easy to remember what traffic was like here on 9-11-01 and to imagine how much worse it would be if a full evacuation of the Metro area were attempted. It makes no sense to try to leave for West Virginia after a chemical attack, dirty bomb or whatever. My 90 year-old mother survived the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, and has a disaster supply kit, food and water in the house for a week, intends to tough out whatever comes and won't leave her home. I've made arrangements for a CNA to stay with her during the day when I'm at work, and overnight if I can't get home. Is there anything else I can do?
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Hello Farifax, VA: You have certainly made a number of very important arrangements for your mother. You may want to keep copies of her medication prescriptions, scan and save important documents(and then send them to yourself- Keeping them on a server allows you to retrieve them when you need to). Post any instructions, phone numbers and other information in your mother's home (covered in plastic or tape and written with permanent marker) Make sure you also work out a communication plan with the CNA (contact numbers of relatives, neighbors, etc)
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Sorry for the typo, Hello Fairfax
Maryland: How would hospital evacuate critical care patients in a rushed emergency? Wouldn't that just increase mortality rates?
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Every hospital has an emergency plan in the event of a disaster. These plans are reviewed/monitored by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), state governments and the American Hospital Association in addition to other specialty organizations. Plans are developed based on a number of factors and tailored to each hospital and the types of patients they treat.
Re: Pet evacuation: Pets should be allowed on evacuations. Mind you, I don't like animals, and Fluffy and Rover aren't a big deal to me. However, the truth is that many people will not leave their pets behind to starve, drown, etc in a natural disaster. So the only way for to get these people out in time is to let them bring Fluffy and Rover along for the ride.
I couldn't care less about pets, but I'd prefer that their owners survive.
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Good point...there are many reasons why people decide that they can not evacuate. Being aware of these reasons will help all of us understand how to best protect humans!
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Keeping healthy in the aftermath of a natural disaster is a priority,the best way to stay healthy is to wash your hands and wash them often. The Web site posted here is very helpful for everyone in your household (and good practice before flu season as well!)If CLEAN water is not available, use an alcohol based hand cleaning gel. Buy small containers and give one to everyone in your family, keep them at home and at work. Always wash your hands before you eat or prepare food, after going to the bathroom, changing diapers,caring for someone who is sick, tending a cut, touching animals and handling garbage. Here is a helpful hint, if you use a paper towel to dry your hands, grab the paper towel first, dry your hands and then use the towel to turn off the faucet.
Dr. Donna Gaffney: The key elements for being prepared are communication and information. Gather information before there is an emergency. Look at the Web sites posted here and make plans for your own household. Check in with family members who may live in other communities. Use the current events of the past few weeks to talk to children about being prepared(those living in your home and those who are grown and out of the house) Think about a communication plan as well. Distribute contact information to friends and family. For work, be sure to have contact information about your staff and co-workers.
Remember that emergencies and disasters have a psychological effect on all us, talk to your support people. Don't expect to be "superman" or "superwoman," this is a time for everyone to come together and help each other.
Thanks so much for joining me this afternoon, your questions were great.
Silver Spring, Md.: For those looking for an active way to help, I've seen this announcement from several local community leaders on various mailing lists:
For Immediate Release: September 21, 2005
Four hundred volunteers are needed to act as patients in an upcoming emergency preparedness exercise designed to help Montgomery County hospitals test their capacity to handle an influx of patients in an emergency.
The exercise will be held on September 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the following locations: Washington Adventist Hospital, Montgomery General Hospital, Holy Cross Hospital, Shady Grove Hospital and Kaiser Permanente.
The Montgomery County Hospital Collaborative for Emergency Preparedness will hold the exercise to test its ability to manage mass casualties (including special needs populations), provide decontamination, surge capability, and internal and external communications.
Parents may bring children (must be supervised). Refreshments will be provided, and a certificate of attendance, which can be used for Continuing Education, will also be provided.
The epic destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina points again to how important it is for every community to be prepared to react to emergencies,said Andrea Jolly, director of the Montgomery County Volunteer Center. Residents can help locally by participating in the exercise. It should be a great learning experience and fun for all, as well as being an opportunity to help your community prepare for a real-world event.
To volunteer, call 240-777-2600 or e-mail the Montgomery County Volunteer Center at volunteer-montgomerycountymd.gov and include name, phone number, street address, e-mail and hospital preference.
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Thanks so much for the information, I am sure many people will find it very helpful!
Maryland: Who's in charge of evacuating nursing homes? Are the operators solely responsible for mass evacuations or do they have to coordinate with hospitals?
Dr. Donna Gaffney: Nursing homes also have safety standards and disaster plans. If anyone has a family member in the hospital or nursing home, ask about their disaster plan!
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
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Donna Gaffney, an associate professor of Nursing at Seton Hall University and expert in crisis preparedness, discusses how hospitals and the general public can best prepare for Hurricane Rita.
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Talking Points Live
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washingtonpost.com: Recent Talking Points: Race, Class Re-Enter Politics After Katrina.
If a Liberal Opposition Group Held a Rally in a Forest ...
A Rare Sight in Washington: Partisans Back Off.
Terry Neal: Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining me for my weekly chat on politics. I'm looking forward to lots of good questions and a fun discussion today. So let's do this.
Washington, D.C.: Terry -- as we wait for hurricane Rita to hit more-affluent-than-New Orleans parts of Texas, it seems that FEMA and the rest of the Bushies are far more prepared for the aftermath of this storm than they were for Katrina. Granted, lessons were learned the hard way in dealing with Katrina (and continue to be learned daily), which helped them be ready for dealing with Rita. But do you think there will be a political backlash on the administration from this, since by this time next week, it will probably at least APPEAR that they handled the rescue and recovery efforts better in areas of George Bush's home state where people aren't as poor (or as African-American) than they are in New Orleans?
Terry Neal: Thanks for your question. As you probably know, I've been quite critical of the federal response to Katrina in my column. But on this one, I'd have to say that from a political standpoint, Bush is in a tough position. If he and the federal agencies that he oversees respond well to Rita, his critics will note that, and blame race, class or the fact that Texas is Bush's home state. Alternately, if the feds respond poorly, obviously he'll be criticized for that as well.
I think the bottom line though is that the federal response will likely be better simply because of the lessons learned from Katrina. But time will tell, and we'll know for sure by early next week.
Houghton, Mich.: In your estimation, are there enough '06 Senate seats in play to give the Democrats cause for hope, the Republicans cause for worry? I could you briefly address the who/where?
Terry Neal: It is difficult to see at this point how the Democrats could win back the Senate, just looking at the electoral map. However, from a historical standpoint, it's entirely possible. I think going back to the early 1900's, the party that controls the White House loses an average of 6 Senate seats in second-term, mid-term elections. But averages are deceiving and that number has swing wildly. Eisenhower, I believe, lost 13 seats. But Clinton broke even in the Senate. (Don't hold me to these exact numbers. This is a live chat, after all, and I'm working from memory).
About the only thing the two parties agree on about next year's Senate races, is that two of the toughest races for incumbents will be Santorum's seat in Pa. and Chafee's seat in R.I. Democrats will also try to make the argument that they have at least a decent shot in Ohio (DeWine) and Montana (Burns). And some even make the case that Missouri (Talent) and Tennessee (Frist is not running, so the seat is open) could be competitive.
But Republicans also have their sites set on some Democrats they believe could be vulnerable, including Ben Nelson (Neb.), a couple open seats, Maryland and Minnesota.
If the elections were being held today, you could certainly see Democrats picking up maybe one or two seats. But the elections are being held today. We've got more than a year, and a lot can happen in that time frame. If Bush's numbers stay as low as they are, and if Congress's numbers remain in the tank, that would seem to be a good sign, historically speaking, for Democrats.
But it's too early to tell. Maybe Bush bounces back? No one can predict the future.
First, thanks for your time and answers to our questions.
My questions is, with the increasing amount of information coming out about Jack Abramoff's relationship with Tom DeLay, are House Republicans rethinking DeLay's role in Congress?
Terry Neal: This is not something I've reported on, really. But the Post and publications have reported that some Republicans are growing increasingly uncomfortable going into next year's midterms with Delay at the helm. But that discomfort hasn't reached a point were too many people are willing to broach the topic publicly or push the case strongly behind closed doors.
Prosecutors seem to be working diligently to get closer and closer to the majority leader, though. And that could change if he's indicted or something. At this point, however, he seems pretty safe. And he certainly has at least the public support of the majority of his team.
Kansas: In his column today, Mr. Dionne is very critical of Bush fiscal policies that attempt to heap benefits on rich, while reducing entitlements to the poor. Do you think that efforts such as making tax cuts permanent will be hurt by Katrina and the new focus on the needs of the poor?
Terry Neal: That's a good question. So far, most Republicans seem eager to continue with tax cuts, making the Bush tax cuts permanent and at some point in the near future permanently eliminating the estate tax. As E.J. pointed out in his column, some conservative Republicans are demanding spending cuts in big programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
So yes, I think there's going to be a very serious debate about funding priorities. That debate will not just be between Democrats and Republicans, but with internal factions within both parties as well.
I wish I could predict who will win the argument. But I forgot to bring my crystal ball with me today!
Fresno, Calif.: Hi Terry -
It's awfully early to predict '06 Senate races, but do you think Rick Santorum could really be in trouble, as some people say? Thanks.
Terry Neal: The two most respected, nonpartisan elections analyst in DC--Charlie Cook and Stuart Rothenberg--both have Santorum on their most vulnerable list. And I rely on them and others who do this sort of thing full-time for my judgments.
San Diego, Calif.: Why do you suppose that Democrat luminaries are choosing to be 'out of town' this coming Saturday, and will be unable to support demonstrators in the nation's capital?
Terry Neal: This is an interesting question. First, I must say, I don't know which, if any, high-profile members of Congress plan on showing up. But I think the easy answer to this question is that there are many people in this country who oppose the war in Iraq who don't necessarily see themselves as anti-war protestors. There are many moderate Democrats and independent swing voters who merely believe this particular war was a bad one, and they see the anti-war protesters as sort of far-left peaceniks who oppose all wars. That might be unfair, but I think that's the gist of it. And I think some, perhaps many, Democrats in Congress are not eager to be associated with that particular crowd.
In your column this week, members of the CBC seemed to be very reluctant to discuss the role of race in the feds response to Katrina. It seems to me that part of their function is to bring forth issues of concern to our community. The unfortunate outcome of that hurricane has brought to the forefront of national attention the abject poverty in which quite a few African-Americans exist. I believe they are shirking their responsibility by not continuing to forcefully beat the drum.
Thank you for taking my comments.
Terry Neal: Sure, but it's easy to judge from the outside. I don't think these members shy away from representing the issues that are important to their community. But they shy away from talking about race directly, because it's so easy to be shouted down and labeled a racist yourself when you do so. I understand the predicament that they are in, trying to balance the needs of their constituents with their position as the minority within the minority party with very little real power. Not an easy balancing act.
Washington, D.C.: Wouldn't the "offsets" the Republican Study Committee put out be excellent ammo for the Democrats to use in the upcoming '06 elections? While I certainly support reducing the deficit, I think we need to concentrate on the task at hand: restoring the Gulf Coast areas post Katrina and Rita. These cuts the RSC have put out are just short of comical. Many domestic cuts they identify are "duplicative" of other programs. What a bunch of baloney!
Terry Neal: I don't know whether it will be "excellent ammo." But I do think it will amplify the differences between the parties and produce a real debate over substantive fiscal policy issues that has been lacking in recent years.
New York, N.Y.: Hi Terry - Your discussions are always very enlightening.
Do you have any idea who Bush will nominate to to replace O'Connor and do you think there will be a big fight in the Senate?
Terry Neal: I don't know. But all of the reporting is that the next nominee will be at least as conservative as Roberts. Among those being considered, according to the Associated Press yesterday, "Among the names mentioned are AG Alberto Gonzales, ex- AG Larry Thompson, DC Cir Appeals Judge Michael Luttig, 5th Cir Appeals Judges - Priscilla Owen, Edith Brown Clement, Edith Jones, Emilio Garza and Edward Prado, 4th Cir Appeals Judge Harvie Wilkinson, 6th Cir Appeals Judge Alice Batchelder. 10th Cir Appeals Judge Michael McConnell or 3rd Cir Appeals Judge Samuel Alito, SCOTUS Justice Maura Corrigan, and conservative federal appellate judge Karen Williams"
Washington, D.C.: There has been talk about raising taxes and cutting programs to pay for reconstruction of New Orleans and now possibly Texas. I'm not as bright as all those congressman and senators on capitol hill but if we suspended foreign financial and military aid to all those countries that burn our flags for a least a year wouldn't that be enough to cover the cost of rebuilding our cities. Just curious about how much do we spend in those areas annually?
Terry Neal: I don't know of too many "countries" that burn the U.S. flag, and certainly don't know if the U.S. sends a whole heck of a lot of financial aid to the countries that are on adversaries, such as Iran and N. Korea. Certainly there are countries where there are large factions of people who oppose U.S. policies and may burn the flag from time to time. Some of those countries are U.S. allies, and I don't know what is achieved by stopping aid to them because some of their people burn the U.S. flag.
So I think the premise of your question is kind of faulty.
Columbia, Md.: Isn't the assertion that institutional racism was responsible for the slow federal response in New Orleans overly general and vague? Who were the racists or racist institutions responsible and how did racism affect FEMA's performance? Isn't it necessary to name names and bring forth evidence to begin the process of fixing this problem?
Terry Neal: No. Look, this is just a matter of opinion. Either you are inclined to believe it or not. But there is no way to prove or disprove what someone is thinking or if they have racism in their hearts.
Many black people--a point the polls bear out--believe the response to Katrina would have been quicker and better coordinated had the majority of its victims been white and affluent.
I don't know that this is something that could be proved or disproved. It's just a matter of perception.
Hemet, Calif.: In crucial times when the nation's security is under threat and scrutiny, should the 'spin masters' of the media be permitted to spew their disinformation?
For me, their behavior in that regard rivals that of 'Iraqi terrorists.'
Terry Neal: This is one of the most absurd questions I've ever received. I'm not really sure why I'm answering it.
Freedom of speech and the press are cherished values in this country. And people should be free at all times to question and challenge the policies of their leaders.
What is the alternative? Round them up, like Saddam Hussein, an spray them with deadly chemicals. Or maybe do what some of the old South American despots did to dissenters...herd them into airplanes and throw them out over the Atlantic? Or maybe what Castro or China's or North Korea's leaders do: Imprison dissenters for life.
And what is disinformation to you? People who reported that maybe there were no weapons of mass destruction? People who questions assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11.
Look, you don't have to believe anything, but to suggest that journalists, columnists, pundits, bloggers, etc. should not be permitted to dissent in times of national security threats is idiotic.
And by the way, as a side matter, when will the U.S. no longer face any national security threat? Probably never. So under by your logic, dissenters and critics would never be permitted to speak.
Germantown, Md.: IS there any hope for -real- belt-tightening and revenue-raising (there, doesn't that sound better than tax increase?) on Capitol Hill or is it just sound and fury?
Terry Neal: I don't have much hope. Neither party seems to have much heart for reigning in spending.
Terry Neal: All right folks, I've got to run. This has been tons of fun for me, and I hope you as well!
I know I missed a lot of questions, but I can't take 'em all. If I missed you this week, try me again same time, same place.
Take care and have a great weekend.
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Jason La Canfora: Hello everyone. Well, this should be fun. 2-0. No QB controversy. All is right with the world, eh?
Just wanted to congratulate my colleague Nunyo for his impending move to Sports Illustrated before we got started here. He is a good friend and was a great partner on the beat, and I look forward to reading his NFL coverage in SI.
Okay, let's get 'er going here.
Georgetown, Ky.: What are your feelings on Lavar? Is he healthy? We need the playmaker on the field - granted the defense is outstanding but the Skins need to cause more turnovers- are they slowly bringing him back or disappointed in his play?
Jason La Canfora: LaVar may not be 100 percent game fit, but he is close and says his knee is fine. This is a coaching decision at this point and as long as this D thrives as currently put together, do not expect changes for the sake of changes. I do not expect to see a ton more PT for LaVar until the D slips, injuries occur or he makes some huge plays when on the field. Gregg Williams and his staff do not care about salary, status, draft position, etc. If it ain't broke, they won't be trying to fix it.
Tampa, Fla.: Thanks Jason for taking questions.
I have not heard anything about the "illegal" clothesline tackle of Brunell. What's the skinny here? If your name isn't Brady, McNabb et.al., its okay?
Second... the word is that Casserly's position is somewhat tenuous. If he is let go what would be the possibility of him coming back here as (personally) I just don't think Vinny Cerrato has the kahunas to be in the position.
Jason La Canfora: Charley may have to really turn that team around to save his job. He is very well respected and I am sure will find work elsewhere should it not work out in Texas, but I would shocked if he ever worked for Dan Snyder again. He has a good relationship with Gibbs, but I don't see it happening.
Leesburg, Va.: What (realistically) are the chances of trading Ramsey before the deadline? If they don't do you think he'll be here next year? -Personally, I think we should see if Detroit is interested. I'd take any of their three receivers in a straight-up trade for Ramsey. They are obviously looking for a new QB. Seems like a good fit to me!]
Jason La Canfora: I would be pretty surprised. The Redskins need experienced cover at QB, particularly if they keep up their winning ways. If Brunell keeps getting pounded like he did in Dallas - and not all teams have the kind of D line the Cowboys do - it will be tough to keep him healthy for 14 straight weeks. Campbell simply is not ready and this season is too valuable at this point to turn it over to a rookie QB. My feeling is Patrick will be dealt by next year's draft, but I think he'll get at least a few more snaps here before that happens, whether due to injury, mop-up duty, or ineffectiveness.
Wow, what a great never-give-in effort Monday.
Walt Harris (and as usual Springs) look awesome. Any word from the coaches on how Rook CB Carlos Rogers is doing? He looked great in preseason, and I've noticed him a little in the 1st 2 games.
And to all you fans going to the Seattle game- I want to hear it. LOUD.
Jason La Canfora: Carlos is being brought along slowly. With Walt playing at this level, there is no indication Rogers will be starting anytime soon, and I think his work will remaining limited.
Against a team like Seattle, that will really spread the field at times, we should see more of him as a nickel back, but Dallas and Chicago do not throw all that much, which has something to do with his lesser role thus far.
Frederick, Md.: How will the Redskins do against the nfc west and afc west.
Jason La Canfora: To me the AFC West game could really be the difference between contender and pretender. They will face some big-time offenses, and couple of former coaches as well. If the Skins come out of the KC-Denver stretch still above .500 then I think they could be on the verge of a special season.
Kensington, Md.: What is the status of Lemar Marshall? I heard this is a going injury. Is this something that concerns the team? Gibbs sounded worried about it at the press conference after the game.
Jason La Canfora: I spoke with Lemar this week and he said he felt much better after a day of rest, but admitted he was in significant pain during the game. Said a few times he was trying to make eye contact with the coaches and his back-up, Khary Campbell, to signal he needed to come out, but could not hook up with them, so gutted it out. Lemar said he'll be fine for the Seattle game.
He is doing a great job filling in for Antoinio Pierce this far, which has helped that defense stay as stout as it was last season.
Yorktown, Va.: The OL looks great, with the glaring exception of Derrick Dockery. What's his problem? He looked terrible.
Jason La Canfora: Dock is still a work in progress it seems. Penalties. Penalites. Penalties. If he can ever get fundamentally sound, with that kind of body, he could be a real force. Bugel is really hard on him at times and is trying to whip him into being an impact player, but he's not there yet.
Gainesville, Va: What an interesting time. What should we expect from the 'Skins? One thing I noticed was that most of the pass plays were short "outs." There were almost no crossing patterns, no 15 yard turn-ins. Were those plays not open or don't the redskins use them?
Jason La Canfora: You are bang on. They have no intermediate passing game to speak of at this point, which is why I think we have seen so little of Chris Cooley. To me, they are going to have to get #47 into the attack if they are going to keep this going, because I don't see them winning on 70-yard post patterns every week. There is so much work to be done with this passing game, and I think the general lack of crispness is a big part of why we have not seen those 15-20 yard gains.
This staff also seems to prefer a 5-yard screen to the sidelines, as well, with the onus on the WR to beat a man and gain yards after the catch.
Herndon, Va.: What do you mean, no QB controversy? Mark Brunell is currently the 25th-best QB in the league. There isn't one average QB on the roster -- all three, at this point in their careers, are well below average.
With an average QB, this is a playoff team. With Brunell, the defense will have to play lights-out to get to 9-7.
Jason La Canfora: I'm not disputing any of that, but considering the intesity of this debate a week ago, I think it's fair to say Brunell showed enough in those final four minutes to remain the starter for the next little while here. And the bottom line is that even if the Skins had lost that game, Brunell was going to be in there for a while. This was not a move made just for one game.
Could they still end up with a weak passing game, 25-or worse ranked offense and a lost season despite defensive dominance? Absolutely.
Bethesda, Md: WooHoo! What a catch! I woke up the house after midnight with all the hootin' and a hollerin' when Moss caught TD #2...anyone else with me? Any more tales of awakened spouses/neighbors as the 'Skins finally puled one out against the Pokes?
Jason La Canfora: Well, I was scrambling in the press box like a chicken with head cut off trying to re-write my story - again - along with my sports writer brethren. It was kind of a madhouse up there with everyone right on deadline, or past it.
Suitland, Md.: I feel like the Redskins got lucky this past week and were able to win without a substantial running game. Do you think most of their opponents will still cheat the run? And if the team has to win with the passing game, is Brunnel able to keep taking hits like he did, or was that an anomaly?
Jason La Canfora: They had better find a way to score some rushing TD, and get Portis over 85 yards in consecutive weeks, or they will lose more than they win.
They have 1 rushing TD in 5 games - Betts from 1 yard out in Week 17 - and Portis has none in his last 4 starts.
Consider this: Washington never ran a play in the red zone Monday night.
If that continues, this Cowboy game will a rare highlight.
Portis had 29 rushing TDs in 29 games with Denver, and has 5 in 17 with the Skins.
Woodstock, Md.: How much of last week was due to Washington's perseverence and how much was due to Dallas breaking down on D in the last 4 minutes?
In other words, aberration or building block?
Jason La Canfora: I think the combination of the Cowboys soft zone - what exactly does the Prevent defense prevent - and a bad angle from CB Aaron Glenn, and a bad turn from S Roy Williams, and the blazing speed of Moss and the perfect throws from Brunell created the perfect storm. Not the kind of thing easily duplicated every week, but surely the kind of performance that will grab opponent's attention on film and should open up more running lanes for Portis, at least in the short term.
Tabb, Va.: If Brunell was able to launch two passes in the closing minutes of the game, why was he not able to complete some long ones well before?
Jason La Canfora: It's not an easy think to connect on. Takes a ton of practice and great timing and a little luck. He still has not played much in game situations with the starting receivers. They might build from it, or they might not have another 71 seconds like that for the rest of the year. We'll have to wait and see.
Virginia Beach: If the Skins trade Lavar Arrington after June 1st, that spreads out the cap hit and clears up a lot of space to sign players who actually PLAY. I'd trade him straight up for a premier pass rusher or WR. I know the cap hit is huge, but the guy doesn't play. If the Skins could swallow the Coles cap hit to get better, they can swallow this.
Jason La Canfora: It would spread the hit, and be okay in the first year, but then would blow up the cap. I guess if you're trying to make a one-year run ... but it's not going to happen.
LaVar's trade value is at an all-time low, coming off an injury, not getting much PT.
If anything I could see the sides working out a deal to release him, but I don't see a trade anytime soon.
Krasjonarsk, Russia: What kind of work do are you referring to in the intermediate passing game? Just practice and timing? Are the routes even in the playbook. :P
Jason La Canfora: Those routes are in the playbook. Timing, execution, players getting open over the middle, Brunell spotting them. Cooley showed he can be a vital wepaon in that part of the field, and I think he will become a go-to guy again.
Any reason the NFL did not issue a fine for the Ramsey clothesline hit? The guy who hit McNabb in game 1 was fined and that hit seemed pretty legal to me (not late or above the neck).
Also, didn't you think the Taylor hit on Clayton should have been a fumble? I have watched many times and Clayton caught the ball and took one step prior to hit.
But all in all, what a great week for Skin fans.....
Jason La Canfora: They reviewed it and determined it was not a hit to the head or a horse-collar tackle. In essense, the NFL was saying it may not have been worthy of a penalty, but they determined it did not merit a fine or suspension.
I watched Sean's hit several times when reviewing the game in TIVO, and it definitely was a fumble. Seems to happen to him a lot; I wonder if his timing is so perfect, and hits so hard, that in a weird way it works against him, looking like a drop instead of a fumble?
Wanna write for my blog? We can always use the occassional column/rant out of you. I need to boost my readership.
Jason La Canfora: Me, rant?
Would love to but I'm not sure my editors would go for it. You can shoot them an email.
Not sure I would do much to boost readership, though.
Silver Spring, Md.: Someone said the O-line looked great except Dockery.. I didn't get to watch, but wasn't Brunell sacked 5 times? I know the dallas D-line id good, but that doesn't sound like a great performance to me. It wasn't Ramsey holding onto the ball back there for an hour hoping he could see something. What's your opinion on the O-line? (and mad props to the under-rated D-line of the skins!)
Jason La Canfora: It could have been worse. Brunell's mobility really helped at times, and on a few occasions he probably could have thrown the ball away soon. But he was on the run for a good stretch there.
When he had to make the deep throws - and Dallas was not sending blitzers any in a prevent shell - he had all day. But I thought there was too much pressure for much of the game and the Cowboys seemed to be targetting the gaurds.
Silver Spring, Md.: Two good semi-lucky plays, that was all that was done. Everybody take a deep breath, you were still completely dominated for 56 minutes. This isn't a playoff team, it was only two plays against an overrated safety who should be playing utside linebacker... Only two plays, deep beaths. Side note, not a Cowboys fan just a sane football fan...
Jason La Canfora: I hear you. Roy Williams has some serious coverage issues.
In my pre-game stuff I put Moss vs. Williams as a key to the game, and it ended up being the game.
No doubt, this offense still has much to prove.
Any what about the penalties and turnovers. That stuff is getting old.
In one of your summer chats I gave you the privledge of being the first journalist to hear my Super Bowl XL prediction: 'Skins v. Chiefs. I told you the Chiefs only needed to moderately improve their defense. And if Brunell can make a couple of throws per game like he did to Moss on Monday night the 'Skins will be all but invincible. How do you like my Super Bowl prediction now?
Jason La Canfora: Hey, you never know. I think the part about Brunell - or any QB on this roster - being able to complete "a couple" of those throws every week is where the equation may break down.
I do not see the Skins as being a Super Bowl contender, but, hey, I've been wrong about much bigger stuff before (just ask my wife).
They surely have improved their playoff chances dramatically with this start, but there will be 14 straight weeks of football to play out after the bye. Long, long way to go.
Towson, Md.: Jason, two questions, Am a little concerned that Lavar Arrington fades into obscurity at a victory in Dallas while he is fully healthy. I think there's more to it than just the fact that they bringing him along slowly. Second question, why did Gregg Williams's blitz-happy defense not manage even one blitz against Bledsoe, could it be Williams knows something about Bledsoe that we don't see, having coached him in Buffalo? Thanks.
Jason La Canfora: Gregg knows about Drew's arm, has great insight into him and I think the Skins were also worried about Parcells killing them with another deep trick play.
They did blitz, but this defense was not big on sacks or turnovers last year, either, and still thrived. I kind of think with the D line they have, this is who they are. No one stuffs the run better, very strong on the corner and in pass coverage in general, with the ability to confuse and make big plays. More sound than most defense, great fundamentals, no egos, and a team-first system.
As for LaVar, they clearly do not think he is one of their best 3 every-down LBs at this point, and he is still adapting to that role as a DE. Until they believe he is one of their best 11, I don't think he'll get that kind of PT.
Midland, Tex.: The Skins finally established a deep passing threat Monday night. This should open up the running game and intermediate passing game in weeks to come, because every time S. Moss lines up wide, they are going to have to keep a safety on top of him. This should also open up the other side deep for D. Patten, he hasn't done much yet, but you can bet everyone will be paying attention to Santana. Now the Skins will need to attack the middle of the field with Thrash and Cooley for those 15-20 yard gains. It seems as if Brunell finally figured out how far to throw the ball to Moss. He has been consistently beating corners deep, only to have to stop and wait for the ball. What do you think, Jason?
Jason La Canfora: That is precisely what the coaches think. They need to get Patten going, and with Moss drawing more doubles now, plays should be there for him. Those underneath routes will be big. No doubts there will be some renewed repect for the deep ball, but it's going to take better offensive execution overall than what we saw for the first 116 minutes of the season for the Skins to win regularly.
If Brunell continues to hit Moss in stride - like on the final two passes - and not have him waiting - which has led to several near picks, like on the pass to Jacobs in the 4th quarter that could have ended the game - then the offense should open up big time.
Will that be too much to ask? stay tuned.
Boston, Mass.: Jason, the sox are about to ruin my summah!! Anyway, my question is this, with Noble going to IR, and this being our bye week, have we brought anyone in for a workout? I'm concerned about our depth on the DL
Jason La Canfora: Oh man, what a week. I was ready to strangle Timlin - and Tito, not that he has many choices at this point - Wed. night. What an ugly loss. I was hoping after the consecutive hits that Tito would have turned to Hansen, who owned the DRays the other night, but I guess he thought the kid would choke.
Going to see the Sox at Camden Yards this weekend. Hope I bring some luck.
I think they will add a D lineman at some point. The kid they brought up from the practice sqaud, is intiguing, though, and with these coaches, you never know. They seem to be able to coach people up.
Silver Spring, Md.: I have compared the Redskins win on Monday to the movie Big Fish. The end was so amazing that it made the rest of if any good. But through the first 90 percent of it, big yawner.
Jason La Canfora: Never saw that flick, but I'll take your word for it.
Or what about some of the latter Rocky movies, where the fight scenes in the end made up for the overall plot failings?
Frankfort, Ky.: Do you realize that the Skins have only one starter on defense that they drafted (Shawn Taylor)? And they only have four on offense (Jansen, Samuels, Cooley, Dockery). Some guy did the math on this and says it's a league low. Is that right? Have the Skins drafted that badly?
Jason La Canfora: Can't say I know off the top of my head if that is a low, but just look at teams like NE and PHI, that find players all over the draft, it it is no surprise they dominate.
Bethesda, Md.: Why would you be "shocked" if Snyder rehired Casserly? Snyder has publicly admitted that firing Casserly was a mistake, and called Casserly to tell him that. Recall the only reason Casserly was fired was because Norv and Charley hated each other, so Snyder was forced to pick one.
Jason La Canfora: I did not say I would be shocked if Snyder tried to re-hire him (although with Vinny there it's not going to happen), but I don't see Charley wanting to work for him, I don't see him working under Vinny, and I don't see Vinny working under him. And I'm willing to bet most people in the NFL would think the same thing.
Allentown, Pa.: How does Clinton Portis feel about his lack of production? How does the OL feel about not generating the kind of holes to get him going? Is it just good defense by opponents: bottle him up and make the Skins win it in the air? Or is he just a poor fit for a Gibbs offense? I noticed they bounced him outside a lot more against the Cowboys, but he still wasn't a difference-maker.
Jason La Canfora: Clinton agreed that he "left some yards out there" Monday night. Still trying to meld all the parts here, and sometiems he looked for the cutback instead of plowing ahead for positive yardage.
This is not a big-time running attack yet. Need to do it week after week.
Given the way things went in Dallas, with the Skins trailing and all, there were fewer running plays than normal, also.
Yazoo, Mich.: Yet again, the season comes down to how the Skins perform against the NFC East, not some sorry AFC teams. The Skins are 1-0 in division, and if they can just win their home games and finish 4-3 in the East, I like their chances for a playoff slot.
Jason La Canfora: Anyone who has read my chats knows how much import I place on division games, and I am with you.
But I was looking at the near term. If they can do well on the road at KC and Denver - two of toughest places to play in the NFL - then confidence will be high and they look good to be a contender.
Remember, half of the division schedule is played in the final 3 weeks, with Dallas and NYG at home. Without quality play early on, those games might not mean as much.
DWIJOEVILLE, Md.: Thanks for taking my comment Jason, I have two quick comment/question.
Do you think that Walt Harris is that good or is Gregg Williams is that good. Wilbon brought up a perfect point, that since Gregg Williams has been here, we have had only 3 half of games that are defense didn't look dominant. My question involves Patrick Ramsey? What are we thinking now that Mark Brunell seems to be our shoulders to ride on (one game isn't enough for me, I have to see some consistency, something the Redskins are not good for). Is Patrick Ramsey on the trading block and what would we trade him for. Personally, I would like to get a nice pass rusher for him. Your thoughts?
Jason La Canfora: I think Walt, when 100 percent healthy, can be very good, and Gregg is a dominant defensive coach.
I don't see the Skins getting more than a mid-level draft pick for Ramsey at this point, unless for some reason he plays well down the stretch.
Nashville, Tenn.: Okay Jason here's a Question from me and the fellas at Hailredskins.com Why is it we haven't seen more outside running and pitches to Portis? I remember he used a few misdirection pitches last year and alway had nice results. Is this just an example of Coach Gibbs Conservative nature like with the shotgun thing. IS Gibbs too afraid of the Bad to accept the Good?
Jason La Canfora: I think the running game was out of whack against Dallas, and when the lead got to 13-0 the game plan shifted.
I think they really like Portis catching balls out of thebackfield. I look for more pitches to come, and they did get him wide of a tackles several times against the Bears.
There is a lot of potential there.
I think against a team like Seattle we could see Portis on outside cutbacks and Betts bashing between the tackles.
Bowie, Md.: Did I miss something? I haven't heard Antonio Brown's name mentioned as of late.
Jason La Canfora: Alas, my prediction on that one turned out right.
Alexandria, Va.: Jason: Do you think the Redskins can compete with the Eagles for the NFC East title?
Jason La Canfora: I think the Eagles remain the class of the division, but the Skins, Dallas and the Giants could really battle it out for that next spot.
Jason La Canfora: Well, looks like my time is up. Thanks for all the great questions and sorry about the ones I didn't get to. Feel free to email me - lacanforaj@washpost.com - and look forward to our next chat. Have a great weekend.
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Tell Me About It
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Appearing every Wednesday and Friday in The Washington Post Style section and in Sunday Source, Tell Me About It Bæfers readers advice based on the experiences of someone who's been there -- really recently. Carolyn Hax is a 30-something repatriated New Englander with a liberal arts degree and a lot of opinions and that's about it, really, when you get right down to it. Oh, and the shoes. A lot of shoes.
Herndon, Va.: As a Catholic, I have to disagree somewhat with your response to Weddingsville. My parents also expect me to have a large, family wedding when I get married. A wedding brings two families together, which involves specific religious and cultural traditions they want to honor. These traditions are at least as important, if not more, then my personal preferences.
I don't see her fiances reasons as "mushy, fear-driven pandering" as you suggested, but as a desire to honor his families wishes about an event that''s important to them, too. That carries just as much weight as her wish for a small, simple ceremony. A wedding ceremony that takes into account both families wishes for the day, not just the bride and grooms, would provide a much better start to their union.
Carolyn Hax: I agree with all of that. Well said.
But that's because you have a clear idea of what you want and why. In the case of the letter I published, the groom is like your indecisive son--he knows it means a lot to YOU, but hasn't formed his own opinion. At least, from the information we're given. So until his beliefs form into his beliefs, vs. a vague sense of responsibility for others' beliefs that he wants his nonbelieving in-laws to finance for him, they're filed under mushy, fear driven pandering.
Carolyn Hax: Oh, and hi everybody.
Portland, Ore.: You probably won't answer this, but I am 12 years old. And I want to know what to say when a guys threatens and bugs me.
Carolyn Hax: Hi. I am answering this. Thanks for asking.
When you feel threatened, by anyone, locate the nearest trusted adult (parent, teacher, coach, principal, guidance counselor?) and explain exactly what you're feeling and why. And if you aren't taken seriously by that adult, locate the next closest one and try again. And so on. Don't worry that you might be overreacting or looking or sounding stupid. It is never stupid to trust your instincts and speak up on your own behalf. Please trust me on this, and find that adult, and write back to us to tell us how it went.
Dadsville, Va.: Thanks for all the responses last week, including yours Carolyn.
My wife and I have talked long and hard about what it would mean to have kids, the changes, the fears etc. But it's one thing to talk about something in the abstract and another to deal with the reality. My wife will make an excellent mother and she seems to think I'll be a great dad. And since I consider her an excellent judge of people I guess I have to accept that I will be -- even if the responsibly is a little frightening.
I didn't get to read the chat until later, but it seemed that I might have indirectly started some debate on what it means to be a parent.
For me being a parent is not a 24/7 job for the next 18 years -- but maybe close for a short while.
Both parents need time for themselves and each other. Just as being married doesn't mean I never do anything without my wife, being a parent doesn't mean being with my kid(s -- maybe?) all the time. Kids have to learn to get by in the world without their parents - we can't shield them from everything until we die. To create a fully functioning adult (which is the aim surely?) the good and the bad elements of the world need to be introduced to kids, tweens, teenagers and adolescents in a gradual process.
Carolyn Hax: You're welcome. Thanks for checking back in, and for your sane view on a parent's responsibility. You'd be surprised at how many people disagree, or at least how many wildly different courses of action claim the same philosophical core. But then, I guess that's what last week was about.
Oh, and if you arent' a little frightened by the responsibility of being a parent, you're either cavalier or catatonic. Sounds like you'll be fine. (And when you're feeling least sure of that, think about all the parents you knew about when you were a kid, and how they all managed to make it work somehow. Without car seats, no less.)
Kansas City: When and how is the best time to tell your girlfriend that um you cross dress?
Carolyn Hax: Soon, in men's clothing.
So, I've spent two years in a fairly miserable marriage where I was taken for granted. Previous efforts to communicate my unhappiness failed, so I gave my husband an ultimatum: either things get better by the end of the year, or I'm leaving him and going back to my home city.
I know ultimatums aren't the most mature way of doing things, but from previous experience he's the sort of person who needs to be shocked into recognizing a problem. Also, I knew I could only take a few more months of being miserable, and didn't want to have a "secret ultimatum" -- he deserves a chance to do better, rather than me keeping a mental scorecard and bailing without any notice. He has the right to know what's wrong.
So now he's cleaning up his act, which brings me to my question. How do you tell the difference between genuine change and change out of fear? He's very afraid of losing me, and has been bending over backwards to make me happy. How do I know if these changes will stick?
Carolyn Hax: Time. You've gotten what you asked, and now it's your turn to see if that's enough.
If it helps, I don't think I've ever come across an example of insincere change that lasted more than a few flips of the calendar. You'll know soon enough.
I Should Smarter than this, too: Dear Carolyn,
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I am still pondering the whole crummy relationship topic. I've been in a crummy relationship for a while and, though it appears to be finally ending, I just can't seem to let go emotionally. He is critical, self-righteous and socially unacceptable in many ways. And I love him. We are wrong for each other and I am convinced I would lead an unhappy life if I stay with him... WHY IN THE WORLD can't I let go?!
You suggested that there's a need the crummy relationship is fulfilling. That one should find the need, find the souce and fix it. Please elaborate on this. I don't know how to find the need, let alone fix it.
Carolyn Hax: Are you ... the child of a critical and self-righteous parent, and seeking your BF's approval as a proxy for that parent's?
Are you just so used to this kind of treatment that it's your natural comfort zone, even though you "know" it shouldn't be?
Are you the child of an alcoholic?
Do you find yourself collecting broken people and trying to fix them? Is your sense of success or failure as a person closely tied to how each project is going?
Does your ego need for this relationship to appear successful--e.g., because everyone always slams your taste in men and you're sick of being treated like a judgment emergency?
Are you afraid uncritical, well-adjusted people are going to spot you for a freak and want nothing to do with you?
Or, do you find well-adjusted people boring?
Are you critical and self-righteous inside but afraid to be that way in public, so you get a vicarious something from him?
If any of these rings a bell, that's step one. Step two might come naturally as an extension of that eureka moment, but if it doesn't, or if there is no eureka moment, that's where (competent) therapy can save you from a lot of false starts and dead ends.
Trans-partner: My beau told me about his alter-ego on the third date... but I'd had a sneak-preview due to Halloween costume stories.
Sooner is better. Education is excellent. So many points on the spectrum (from kink to gender dysphoria)
Carolyn Hax: A 'nut for every need. Thanks for the mini education. If you will.
Ultimatum: But, isn't that the general problem with ultimatums? You never know if the person is doing X because they want/need to, or if it's only because of the ultimatum. Seems to always make their actions a little hollow.
Carolyn Hax: Righto. But it does seem as if this person knew whom she was dealing with, and that her choices were between leaving or giving the guy one last kick in the butt, which makes an ultimatum a logical, if still not ideal, choice. (For a situation that had no ideal choices left.)
Silver Spring, Md.: I can't find my car keys. Where are they?
Carolyn Hax: Probably right where you left them.
42.72 N, 73.71 W: In your column a few weeks back, you wrote that "textbook passive aggressive is someone who avoids taking a direct stand and instead makes his point through inaction or procrastination." But how do you distinguish between genuine PA and someone who is honestly forgetful, disorganized, overcommitted, lazy, depressed, or some combination?
Carolyn Hax: Question With a Question, CT:
Does it matter which is which, when the end result is the same?
Silver Spring, Md.: My friend's mom hits on me incessantly. How can I politely tell her no while not losing my friend?
Carolyn Hax: Help, we've fallen into a B movie and we can't get up!
Say no politely, and accept that the survival of the friendship may already be out of your hands.
Carolyn Hax: It might also be possible just to pretend the hittings-on aren't really happening. The oh-you're-such-a-kidder approach. But if you've already exhausted that possibility, then we're back to saying no and ducking for cover.
Re: Ultimatimland: I gave my ex-husband the same kind of ultimatim. There was a honeymoon period that was very nice. About a month. Then we were back to the same old thing.
When I told him I was leaving, he said I had never given him any notice that anything was wrong! :::snort::: So I pointed back to the ultimatim and honeymoon period. Sigh.
Carolyn Hax: Yeah. The old I-was-blindsided response. Which may be infuriating at first but is really just sad, because it's true: Had the guy actually heard what you were saying, you wouldn't have felt the need to leave. So it makes you both right at a time when it no longer matters who's right.
Anonymous: I had an ephipany last week that maybe I didn't want to stay in the D.C. area forever and that, in fact, it would be nice to move back to the Boston area where I grew up and I have many friends and family. I broached the subject with the hubby and to my surprise, he's in favor of it. The sticky part is this: his dad is not well. I would never ever expect him to move away from his dad and of course he feels the same way. So now we have this planned move that I'm looking forward to and in order for it to happen, his dad has to die, which would be awful. I feel horribly guilty.
Should I not have brought it up? Should we shelve the discussion? Do I flog myself?
Carolyn Hax: None of the above. Life happens, and that includes death. Every single time, in fact. The more frank you can be about death while also never losing sight of each other's feelings, the better you'll be able to weather it, support each other through it, and make good decisions around it. "It's important that we be here for your dad, and who knows what else can happen, so maybe we should think of Boston as part of a long-term plan." Then see how he feels about that.
Phoenix, Ariz.: Sitting in my home office listening to the carpet cleaner talk to himself... loudly. Now he's singing. How much should I tip?
Carolyn Hax: A lot. A lot plus more if the singing is really bad.
Anywhere, USA: How do you get to the point where you are able to turn the other cheek and be "bigger person", e.g. when an ex is rude with you and always has to have the last word, etc.? I really want to send a scathing response to his email because he thinks that I care way more than I do, but I also just want to move on. I hate the fact that I am even considering emailing him. Any thoughts?
Carolyn Hax: He's pushing your buttons in hope of that exact response from you. Don't give him the satisfaction. He is a big dried puffy dandelion, to which your answer is, whooooooo ...
Not too long ago turned I down the offer of a friend to start dating. Am crazy about the person but very unsure of compatibility and am really too preoccupied with other major events in my life to start a relationship right now. Now he's dating someone new and I'm jealous. I didn't want him now anyway for some legit reasons, so why can't I make the jealousy feelings go away? Do I just wait it out until the mention of the new relationship doesn't make me upset? Is there something I can do to speed up this process? Staying preoccupied doesn't seem to help. I have the same reaction every time the relationship comes up. I am not a jealous person generally, which is why i'm aggravated at my response.
Carolyn Hax: Well wait a minute. I know I've been awfully hard on jealousy over the years, and frankly I've meant every word of it. But that doesn't mean every word makes for a complete picture of jealousy. It's like anger--without focus and in excess, it's a problem that needs to be addressed. But when it flares up on occasion and for very specific reasons, it's giving you valuable information about yourself and your surroundings, no different from any other emotion.
When you are crazy about someone, you want it to be mutual. You don't want to watch that someone go off and be crazy about someone else. It's disappointing, painful, disorienting, and it's supposed to make you feel jealous.
So listen to it, and figure out what it's telling you about yourself and your surroundings. You're obviously the only one in a position to call it, but my top two candidates are that you're regretting your decision to postpone him in favor of life events and seeing that feelings should trump schedules; or that you're seeing, live and in stereo, that you made exactly the right decision because he wasn't as crazy about you as you had assumed he was.
If you have to, talk to him to find out. As bluntly as needed to learn what you need to get on with ... whatever.
Bored and unmotivated: I took today off to get some projects done and I'm just sitting on the couch watching reruns. And I like it. But I'm feeling guilty because I have tons of stuff to do. It can wait until tomorrow. It can wait until next year. But next year when I'm still sitting on the couch doing nothing I'm going to whine about not getting anywhere. How do you get/stay motivated? I used to be really active and excited about whatever projects I had going... and now I just want to be entertained.
Carolyn Hax: Declare today as your entertainment day (and tomorrow, too, if you need it) and start a project first thing Sunday. Better to use a day for rest than to squander it denying you need rest.
Arlington, Va.: How important do you think it is to be open about past mental health issues with your significant other? My boyfriend was hosptitalized twice while in college. This was nine years ago, before I knew him. He doesn't want to share the details of why. He's still dealing with depression, but takes meds responsibly and is in therapy. We've been dating for two years and are starting to see a future together. Should I just accept the fact that he doesn't want to talk about it?
Carolyn Hax: Where's a wishy-washy "you know best what you need here" response when I need it?
No. Do not accept that fact. You deserve someone you can love completely, he deserves someone who can love him completely, and neither of you gets that if he withholds an entire swath of himself.
Plus there's the matter of your helping him be well. He needs an informed partner for that.
Ultimatum: Where's the line between ultimatum ("change or else") and full disclosure on deal-breakers ("You have a right to know how serious I think this problem is. It has the potential to drive me away from you")?
Are tehse two things the same?
Carolyn Hax: Yeah, but I vastly prefer the rephrasing. Don't you? Less of a threat and more of a, "Here's something you're entitled to know" (before the freight train comes through the living room." Again, we're talking about a narrowly defined situation where an ulimatum and its gentler siblings are appropriate--so narrowly defined that if it's possible you won't want to stay even if you get what you want, then you have to skip the ultimatum and figure out a plan b.
RE: Friend's Mom: We want to find out how old the questioner is, no? 'Cause if he (or she) is under 18, then this is really creepy and may warrant a phone call to some authority or other.
Carolyn Hax: Let's go with the same trusted-adult plan as explained to the 12-year-old, if the questioner is young-teen-ish or if the questioner is older teens but the situation has the person feeling powerless or threatened.
Re: I should be smarter than this : Not to beat another dead horse, either, but I second your suggestion of therapy. It helps you see the patterns that might not otherwise be visible, or the place in you that somehow finds a crummy relationship satisfying. And so often the "I should be smarter than this" kind of thinking gets in the way of seeking exactly the kind of help we need - because, I think, we confuse the various forms of intelligence. You can be a rocket scientist and still lack some emotional awareness, and the therapy can help develop the latter. The fact is, we focus on educating our kids out the kazoo, but we spare very little time for emotional education, and that's the gap that therapy can fill. We all have blind spots, childhood hurts we carry, patterns we develop early that we can never quite let go of and yet which make us unhappy - and therapy can help. Bottom line: If you're stuck and you can't figure out why, don't assume you're too smart for therapy - brain power doesn't have anything to do with it.
Carolyn Hax: Thank you, thank you. For those still skeptical, but not skeptical of sending a question my way, please realize that both are different branches of the same tree. We're outsiders trying to see something that you may have missed, either because you're standing too close to see it or because your experience never taught you to look for it. I know my complete lack of education, knowledge, training and access to your insurance information makes me the more appealing choice, but a therapist can get into so much that I can't, just by virtue of seeing you, listening to you, asking you questions and repeating all three till you get somewhere.
Santa Monica, Calif.: Hi Carolyn,
My husband has weathered a controlling and abusive relationship with his mom for many years. Growing up, he and his three sisters did a lot of eggshell walking.
Now that a wife is on the scene, she's really flipped her lid. The past four years of holidays have been a nightmare because instead of spending the entire time with her we've chosen to split it with my folks as well.
Last Easter, she accused me of being controlling and manipulative. She screamed and cursed at me. My husband laced into her, then left with me.
His dad, his grandfather, and two out of three of his sisters are so under Mamma's spell that they won't have anything to do with him if he "sides with that woman." (moi)
I know he feels terrible over the loss of all of them at once but he's made it clear to everyone that in this case his wife comes first.
After a few months of hysterical e-mails and a couple more months of blessed silence, Mamma has started up again because Turkey Day (you know, when we get together with all of those damn turkeys) is approaching.
We feel so torn. My husband wants to get her to leave us alone. She's getting a little stalkerish - middle of the night sobbing phone calls, drive bys past our house...but he misses the rest of his family.
Sink or swim? What do we do? (Yes, he tried family counseling. It didn't work).
Carolyn Hax: Oh my goodness. He will probably find that the only way to keep from getting sucked into the vortex is to sever his ties completely, but I think anyone who has ever done it--even and maybe especially those who are glad they did it--will agree that you have to exhaust all possible alternatives first. So, the alternative I see is for him to lay out a clear, written, side-with-neither-side plan for the holidays--"we will be here from the Wth to the Xth, and there from the Yth to the Zth"--throw in a "home by ourselves" as needed, without apology--and not stray from it and just let everybody freak.
Of course there will be a point that you get subjected to more venom than you or he should stand for, and if you're already there, then sever. Sad, sad, sad.
Oh, and you should both read "The Gift of Fear" ASAP. Excellent information on, and guidance for responding to, controlling behavior like his mother's.
Chevy Chase, Md.: Alas, you have one advantage over therapists. Should I fill out a federal government employment form, I don't have to tell them that I've asked you for advice, while I am supposed to write down if I've ever seen a psychologist for ANY reason and why.
I am not required to disclose hormonal problems (diabetes), neurological problems, etc. on a job application, but I have to disclose (for instance) that I saw a shrink over divorce problems? Blearggghhh...
Carolyn Hax: You know, I think it's time this requirement saw the light of 2005. How to go about getting something like that wiped out? Obviously it needs to stick around for certain security clearances, but only if it allows for explanation so employers can differentiate between potential instability and grief counseling/situational depression/emotional education-type stuff. I mean cheez.
Mental Health Issues Boyfriend: The standard is, you get hospitalized for mental health issues if you're considered an imminent threat to yourself or others.
Practically speaking, that probably means he either tried to kill himself, or felt bad enough that he thought he might harm himself or somebody else. The poster doesn't say whether it was voluntary or involuntary - which means we don't know whose judgment was involved.
I don't think this fact, without context, is a dealbreaker. But - he can't talk about this significant life event, in any way, nine years later, with the person he's considering spending his entire future with?
Knowing that, how on earth could you feel comfortable that he'd say something to you if the harming self or others feelings came back? Which, statistically speaking, they are likely to do with someone who has already suffered a major depressive episode.
Carolyn Hax: I think you covered it all, thanks.
Whoa: I hope you just didn't give the green light to Arlington to browbeat her boyfriend until he reveals the reason for his hospitalizations and therapy. She may certainly deserve full disclosure, but that's a case of when HE'S ready, not when she wants to know, and if that's never, well, perhaps this isn't the relationship for it. He's in therapy - for something that occurred before she was in his life. When he feels safe enough he'll share. She doesn't get to go back to him with "Carolyn says you need to tell me."
Carolyn Hax: You know what, though? If that's her way of dealing, then HE should find that out now. That's the beauty of be-yourself-ism. It includes the way you incorporate outside advice.
Not that I'm trying to absolve myself of responsibility to advise ... responsibly? But your filters and skepticism and judgment need to be in place, too.
Silver Spring, Md.: Must I, for ethical purposes, have in mind affirmative action when selecting members to join my Sunday softball team?
Carolyn Hax: Yes, and it must include other species as well. Just because dogs don't have opposable thumbs doesn't mean they're not entitled to a little romp around the diamond.
Severing ties with mom...: I've pretty much severed all ties with my dad, who has serious untreated mental illness problems and is a very unpleasant person to be with. You said we should exhaust all other options before we do that. I'm not sure that I've exhausted every single option, but I feel pretty confident that all those un-exhausted options would fail. So should I keep trying or give up?
Carolyn Hax: I guess I should have specified feasible options. If in your best judgment an "option" is determined to be a non-starter, then of course you can trust your judgment and not start it. I wouldn't even define it as an option.
You can also trust your judgment and say, "$%^& Carolyn, I'm done." The "should" was intended merely as an inoculation against YOUR feelings of guilt and regret. If you've tried beyond the point of fearing those things, then who cares what I think. And if you're not sure, err on the side of caution (ie, making the effort) till you are.
Hospitals only for Dangerous, States of Mind?: Can't a person be hospitalized for OTHER non-dangerous mental health reasons, e.g. anorexia, crippling depression, substance abuse, other problems that do NOT necessarily mean a judgment was made that they were dangerous to themselves or others (except that, I suppose, any mental health problem is, by definition, "dangerous" to one's health . . .)? The last poster seemed a tad too skittish about mental health treatment that involved hospitalization. Seems to me -- could be almost anything. The partner should still ask, but I don't think we need to scare him/her about the "Danger" question. I think the last poster might be thinking that you're only hospitalized INVOLUNTARILY if you're a danger to yourself or others -- we don't know if this boyfriend was hospitalized involuntarily or not.
Carolyn Hax: I see all those reasons you listed as dangerous, each one a valid threat to life.
What I saw in that post was just that a hospitalization means a Big Deal, and that the future spouse of someone who in the past has wrestled with a Big Deal needs to know what this Deal was, both for the good of the Dealer and for the good of the spouse.
If I misread it, I apologize.
Washington, D.C.: Re: affirmative action softball
What an odd question. Either invite all your friends or invite only friends who are good softball players or if it's some sort of team related to a specific group (work-related, civic organization) ask the members of that group. Why is that so difficult? That's what generic mass e-mails for for.
Carolyn Hax: I read it as, do I need any chicks in the lineup? But that's just because I'm a man-hating biatch with too much audience on my hands.
Kazoo?: I thought we educated our kids out the Wazoo, not the kazoo.
Carolyn Hax: Maybe wazoo is now considered offensive (since it can also be UP the wazoo, and you see where that takes us). Maybe we need to start typing up the w----. Or up the ---oo.
Downside to seeing a shrink: Don't get me started on how seeing a shrink and -- god forbid -- taking antidepressant medication can affect your life. I'm a 40-year-old professional, with a husband and a young daughter, otherwise pretty healthy, but I've been successfully taking Prozac for 10+ years for a stubborn case of depression. But NO ONE -- yes, I've tried every possible avenue -- will sell me disability coverage. I have even tried offering to exclude disability caused by mental illness, but no go. The fact that I take a medication for a mental illness is the only thing these insurance companies care about. I don't know what my family and I will do if I become disabled, and I worry about it every day.
Carolyn Hax: You know, I knew this. And it is so unbelievably wazoo-backward, because it essentially tells people they're a better insurance risk if they leave their mental illnesses undiagnosed and untreated, when even a complete wazoohole knows the exact opposite is true. So. Here's a public service reminder, in the form of affirmation to you, Downside, of what I'm sure you already know: Given your two options, you are, by getting the taboo treatment that precludes insurance, choosing the safer option for your family. Just don't walk under any ladders.
Wasn't Tipper Gore trying to change some of this stuff?
Top Secret security clearance: Just to reassure you and others, you CAN have a top secret security clearance even if you disclose that you have sought mental health treatment. Don't let that government job form scare you away! There are plenty of other things about government employment for that....
Too Serious vs Naive: Affirmative action and softball - I read it as a joke! Color me naive
Carolyn Hax: And here I was answering it seriously. Silly me.
For softball: Actually, you shouldn't use race as any factor (whether affirmative or not). You should consider athletic ability, experience, knowledge, and the ability to catch a ball after 7.5 beverages.
To bored and unmotivated: Hey, I know you -- you're the person in my mirror. I know exactly how you feel. I agree with Carolyn on taking it easy, but are you the type of person who has trouble getting out of bed (sleeping in feels sooooooo good!) on the weekends? I'm struggling with the same issues. I think the solution is to set small goals for yourself. For example, tidy your bedroom or living room (don't go overboard and reorganize your sock drawer) so that you can really see and be inspired by the positive impact on your life from the small projects that you're completing. Then you won't feel so overloaded and overwhelmed that you take refuge in relaxation. If you have a bigger project, break it down. I'm trying to start a sideline music business while working full time an hour's drive from where I live. After a couple of months, I have a room in my house reserved for the music room, I have it painted and the furniture re-arranged, and I've started getting some music written. In March, the room was crammed with an extra bed and a bunch of junk. Now I can walk into it, see the fresh paint and uncluttered floor, and it's inspiring me to write music every day (if there's time!). You just have to start small and before you know it, you'll realize your grand scheme. Good luck. (Another tip that's worked for me is brewing a nice pot of coffee every morning!)
Carolyn Hax: Thanks. And it can also help to get your incremental thing out of the way first, and take your flop on the couch as your reward.
Needs Anti-Jealousy Injection: Please flog me so I can stop dwelling on this:
I was just at an engagement party where all the men ran off to play sports and the women sat around and talked. Bleh. Then all the women started comparing engagement rings. Double bleh. Mine is half the size of the bride-to-be's. I hid my left hand in my pocket and then I felt ashamed of myself.
I'm not a materialistic person in any other respect, but this diamond ring thing really gets my knickers twisted. Like I said, please just flog this jealousy out of me or something.
Carolyn Hax: Eh. You had one bad engagement party. Shake it off.
New York, N.Y.: Oooh, I find well adjusted people boring. So what's my eureka moment? What's the significance? I know I should be able to figure that out on my own (I did have a traumatic childhood), but I'm blocked.
Carolyn Hax: The eureka is just that. Stable people bore you. You're attracted to chaos. You go with what you know.
Either that, or the five people you've come across are, in fact, boring. You need to have a large enough statistical sample for the results to mean anything.
St. Louis, Mo.: Carolyn, I recently got a letter (forwarded from several previous addresses) from an old friend from middle school (I'm 29) who wanted to hear how I am doing, etc. While we were friends 16 years ago, I don't especially feel like rekindling the relationship. What are my obligations, if any? Can I ignore this letter? Am I terrible for not wanting to reconnect when she took the trouble to track me down?
Carolyn Hax: Writing back is not a blood vow (which the person may not even want). Say hi back and that you enjoyed the past-blast. Or, put the person on your holiday-card list, insert a handwritten update, and make it a hard-to-misread hello, be it onetime or every December.
Or ignore it, but that just seems sad. Unless she's a known Velcro type.
To Portland, Ore.: I just wanted to add a bit to what you said to the 12-year-old from Portland. She (I'm assuming) should DEFINITELY do just as you told her, but also remember this: The guy who is threatening and bugging you is trying to get a reaction. Certainly tell an adult, but something else she can do while she's waiting for the adults to do something is to ignore the boy. If he doesn't get the reaction he's seeking, he'll move on to someone else.
I was in this exact same situation at that age. A group of boys in my English class were always teasing me, grabbing my behind, and doing whatever they could to bug me. I told my mom, my teacher, and my principal and the boys all got detention, but the pestering didn't stop until I just ignored them.
Three years later when we were all in high school, I became good friends with one of the guys. He confessed that one of the boys had a crush on me and so his friends were teasing us both (I just never noticed).
Carolyn Hax: Ooh, just saw this, thanks.
I have an etiquette problem (at least that is what I think it is). I do not want to have anyone in the delivery room besides me (obviously), my husband and the medical staff. Moreover, I would rather people not come visit me and the new baby at the hospital. My reason is not that I don't want to share the joy of having a baby, but rather that I am very modest. Friends have asked us to visit them at the hospital, and out of respect, we've gone. Inevitably, the new mama is just learning how to breast feed and so she cannot help but be less modest than perhaps she might otherwise be. Further, she is usually wearing a hospital gown that does not err on the side of modesty. My friends all think I am crazy and want to visit (some have even hinted that they would love to attend the birth!). How can I politely let them know that we will be receiving visitors at home (where I hope to be able to wear something more substantial than a hospital gown and have learned enough about breast feeding that I can do without showing my parts to my friends)? I know it may seem that I am unneccesarily modest, but I just think I won't feel comfortable having visitors when I have to entertain them while sitting in bed. Any advice on a polite way to let people know that we'd love to see them once we arrive home from the hospital would be much appreciated. Thanks -- you rock!
This is your and your husband's baby, and if you're modest, you're modest.
But you're not going to get good enough at nursing in 48 hrs to be able to be discreet about it when you get home.
So, a more reliable strategy would be to get comfortable, quickly, with saying, "Okay, everybody to the kitchen/cafeteria, get a snack, time for me to feed the baby." People will (have to) respect that.
And if you still don't want hospital visits, say so. Say you want unbroken time to get used to the baby. (It helps.)
BTW, after you're a delivery-room veteran, pls write back.. I'd love to hear if you're still as modest.
Centreville, Va.: I've been waiting anxiously to join your team for the ALS walk. Are you still organizing one? Thanks!
Carolyn Hax: It looks like I have too much going on to make it down there this year, but I am not certain so please watch this space. And please accept my enormous teary gratitude for remembering and being so eager to volunteer. This is going to be a tough season for all charities not related to hurricanes. If it turns out I can't travel, I will be establishing a "virtual" team. The 'Nuts for Every Need, perhaps. And I think we need T-shirts ... again, I'm working on it, so please stay tuned for developments.
Wow, I'm still here. But leaving now. Thank you everyone for being here, have a great weekend, get off the damn couch, but only on Sunday morning, and I'll type to you next week.
"If he doesn't get the reaction he's seeking, he'll move on to someone else": Not necessarily. Or maybe he will move on, but it will take a ridiculously long time. When I was in middle school I tried very hard to ignore my tormentors, not even making eye contact with them or acknowledging their existence, but they persisted ... for THREE YEARS! And then the only reason they stopped is that I went to a different high school and fell in with a group of older students who were above that sort of thing.
Carolyn Hax: Proving reality does in fact suck sometimes, thanks. But I bet you're awfully strong for it now.
Stability = stagnancy: Stable well-adjusted people ARE boring. But so are people who habitually create dramas around themselves without any drive to change that pattern. It's just a different kind of stability.
Who's not boring (I find) are people who maybe ain't perfect but at least we're consciously trying to be better people over time.
Carolyn Hax: Agh! No! That IS stable, or a kind of stable. Being sure enough of self to take emotional chances without fear that your world will collapse.
But I do agree drama is dull.
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Join live discussions from the Washington Post. Feature topics include national, world and DC area news, politics, elections, campaigns, government policy, tech regulation, travel, entertainment, cars, and real estate.
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Print Media's Hot New Star: Celebrity Mags
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NEW YORK -- It was 10 minutes past 5 p.m. on Monday and everyone agreed it had been a slow news day. No nannies or strippers alleging affairs with married movie stars. No sightings of celebrity cat fights. No wardrobe malfunctions.
The editors were just about to close the upcoming issue of Us Weekly when Peter Grossman, the magazine's liaison to the paparazzi, raced in.
He was excitedly waving a printout of an image that had been snapped just minutes earlier. It had been taken from the back and at a weird angle -- but the subject was unmistakable.
It was Brad Pitt. And he was carrying Angelina Jolie's adopted Ethiopian daughter, Zahara, who was sporting a pink knit cap, and holding hands with her adopted Cambodian son, Maddox, who was in camouflage. A baby bottle was tucked into Pitt's back jeans pocket.
"Oh!" said Janice Min, 36, the magazine's editor in chief, mobilizing her staff. "Get it, get it!"
The latest angle in the movie-star love triangle of Jolie, Pitt and Pitt's not-yet-ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, qualified as a major event in celebrity journalism, a type of news once relegated to cheap tabloids but now reshaping the media industry. Over the past year, Us Weekly and its competitors have soared in popularity even as the circulations of newspapers, business weeklies and practically every other print publication have been falling.
In the first half of this year, the total circulation of Wenner Media LLC's Us Weekly rose nearly 24 percent, to 1.67 million. Competitors Bauer Publishing USA's In Touch and American Media Inc.'s Star also enjoyed spectacular circulation gains. Time Inc.'s People, widely considered to be America's most profitable magazine, posted a modest increase, to 3.8 million.
The September cover of Conde Nast Publications Inc.'s Vanity Fair, featuring an exclusive interview with a tearful Aniston, was its highest selling issue ever.
With Americans confronting grim news every day about war and natural disasters, "celebrities have become a sort of national distraction," Min said. "They are hired entertainers," she added, and the public demands to be entertained almost constantly.
At the same time, there has been a growing backlash against the tactics some celebrity news organizations use to gather information on stars. The Los Angeles County district attorney has launched an investigation into whether aggressive paparazzi are purposely creating confrontations to get more interesting photos.
The outcry from Hollywood has increased in recent months after a photographer was accused of hitting Lindsay Lohan's car as he was trying to get her picture and when Scarlett Johansson said part of the cause of an accident she got into in the Disneyland parking lot was her effort to duck photographers chasing her.
Like other glossies about celebrities, Us Weekly fills the bulk of its pages with photos. Each week it reviews more than 50,000 submitted by photo agencies and freelancers and narrows them down to a couple of hundred to publish.
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NEW YORK -- It was 10 minutes past 5 p.m. on Monday and everyone agreed it had been a slow news day. No nannies or strippers alleging affairs with married movie stars. No sightings of celebrity cat fights. No wardrobe malfunctions.
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High Cleric Urges Shiites To Adopt Iraqi Charter
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BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- Iraq's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on Thursday urged his followers to adopt a draft constitution scheduled for a nationwide referendum next month, offering crucial support for a document that will give legitimacy to the fledgling Iraqi government.
Observers had been watching to see whether Sistani would weigh in on the political process. Millions of Shiites followed his call in January to vote in the country's first democratic elections in nearly half a century, which gave the Muslim sect a majority in the new government.
If two-thirds of the voters in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces reject the constitution, a new government must be formed and the process of writing the document would start again.
Some Sunni Muslim clerics and politicians have urged their followers to vote down the document, complaining that they did not have adequate representation in drafting it. Sunnis, the favored group under ousted president Saddam Hussein, are estimated to make up nearly 20 percent of the population and form the majority in four of the country's 18 provinces.
Meanwhile, violence across the country killed about a dozen Iraqis.
Two attacks occurred in the Niariya neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. In the first incident, armed men wearing police uniforms stormed the house of a Shiite family, witnesses said.
In the ensuing gun battle, three men were killed and a woman was wounded as she ran from the house screaming that the armed men were criminals, not police. Neighbors said they did not know whether the men, who had two-way radios, were police or were wearing stolen uniforms. The attackers kidnapped a resident as they fled the area.
An hour later just down the street, gunmen killed two brothers, who were Christians, and two other men as they drove to work. The slain men were guards for the former minister of displaced persons and immigrants under the interim government of Ayad Allawi, a spokesman said. Family members confirmed the deaths.
"My God, he was alive one hour ago," Hussam Ghadban, a resident, said of one of the brothers. Minutes before he was killed, according to Ghadban, the man had said: "What a silly life we live in. Where should we go to avoid this violence?"
The attacks occurred in the same area where 26 children were killed in a suicide bombing two months ago. Neighbors expressed outrage at the Iraqi government, calling it a failure for not protecting the people.
"It is a very difficult life," said Anwar Ishac, a cousin of the slain brothers. "We cannot live in this country. That is why everyone, not only the Christians, is leaving the country. It's not safe to go to work. It's not safe to sit at home. If this government cannot do anything to protect us, let them leave. Even the American Army cannot protect us."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, in his first news conference since returning from a two-week visit to the United States and Britain, told reporters that media organizations were supplying misinformation about the progress being made in Iraq.
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BAGHDAD, Sept. 22 -- Iraq's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on Thursday urged his followers to adopt a draft constitution scheduled for a nationwide referendum next month, offering crucial support for a document that will give legitimacy to the fledgling Iraqi...
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Senate Panel Endorses Roberts
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Chief Justice nominee John G. Roberts Jr. won the Senate Judiciary Committee's endorsement yesterday with unanimous Republican support and the backing of three Democrats who said they hope he will keep his promise not to be an ideologue.
The 13 to 5 vote reflected Roberts's praised performance at last week's hearing and the Democrats' inability or unwillingness to mount a united campaign against him. While Republicans and Democrats agreed President Bush's next Supreme Court nomination will be far more contentious, liberal activists clearly saw yesterday's vote for the conservative Roberts as a blow to their effort to maintain a voice in shaping the judiciary.
Roberts, 50, would replace the late William H. Rehnquist, a reliable conservative vote on the high court. Perhaps as early as next week, Bush will nominate a replacement for retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a centrist. Her successor could play a major role in pushing the court to the left or right.
The soothing tones and anticlimactic windup of Roberts's confirmation are unlikely to be repeated in the looming battle to replace O'Connor, an array of lawmakers and activists said. "It's Armageddon," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a Judiciary Committee member who strongly backed Roberts.
The full Senate plans to vote on Roberts's nomination next week, when he is all but assured of being confirmed as the nation's 17th chief justice. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Roberts "is going to make an outstanding chief justice."
The three committee Democrats who voted for Roberts -- Russell Feingold and Herbert Kohl of Wisconsin and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont -- have liberal voting records, and their votes dismayed many groups important to the party's base. A number of Democratic senators from Republican-leaning states have said they will support Roberts next week, leaving their party split almost down the middle on the first Supreme Court opening in 11 years. "I will vote my hopes today and not my fears," Kohl said.
With the committee vote over, other Democrats began to line up for and against Roberts. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), announced yesterday that she will vote no on the nomination, as did Barack Obama (Ill.). Robert Byrd (W.Va.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.) said they will vote to approve Roberts.
"Today was a defeat, there's no question about that," said Ralph G. Neas of the liberal People for the American Way.
Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice called the committee vote "deeply disappointing." But, she added, "We expect the next nomination to ignite a firestorm of opposition. . . . We've just begun to fight."
Roberts's supporters praised his intellect, knowledge and cautious answers that avoided suggesting how he might vote on issues that could come before the court. The five Democrats who opposed him said he dodged too many questions, and they faulted the Bush administration for refusing to provide documents from Roberts's highest-ranking job in government: deputy solicitor general.
All they were left with, they said, were memos that Roberts wrote as a government lawyer in the 1980s, when he questioned, among other things, the "so-called right to privacy." A woman's right to privacy is the legal underpinning for the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.
"I knew as little about what Judge Roberts really thought after the hearings as I did before the hearings," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) who voted against him. She told reporters that she agonized over the decision, calling fellow committee member Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) late Wednesday, and almost phoning Roberts last weekend.
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Roberts received unanimous Republican support and the backing of three Democrats who said they hope he will keep his promise not to be an ideologue.
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Opiates of the Iranian People
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TEHRAN -- If he could afford it, Ali Nariman would drink beer, he says. But like most Iranians, he is poor, and so takes his solace in the form of a small gray ball of opium.
Swallowed whole for maximum absorption, the ball takes only half an hour to deliver the warm, surging relief that inhabitants of the Persian plateau have long associated with advanced age. For centuries in Iran, opium was regarded as a privilege of the elderly, a largely medicinal comfort for the pains and worries accumulated over a lifetime of work.
Nariman is 18. And like hundreds of thousands of Iranians turning to harder narcotics at younger ages, he regards drugs as the only alternative to work.
"We should have jobs," Nariman said, standing in the vast cemetery on the southern edge of Tehran. In a routine played out every Thursday, the day families traditionally visit the cemetery devoted mostly to war dead, young addicts sweep in afterward to scavenge the cookies and dates left on the graves.
"I sometimes find work," Nariman said, "collecting stale bread in town."
According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the population over age 15. Only two other countries -- Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan -- pass the 2 percent mark. With a population of about 70 million and some government agencies putting the number of regular users close to 4 million, Iran has no real competition as world leader in per capita addiction to opiates, including heroin.
When an earthquake leveled the city of Bam in 2003, among the emergency supplies rushed to the scene were doses of methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin and morphine addicts, for the 20 percent or more of the population believed to be addicted. So many Iranians rely on opiates that an influential government analyst suggests the state itself should consider cultivating poppies.
"Yes," said Azarakhsh Mokri, director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies: "A strategic reserve of narcotics."
But if the utility of narcotics has roots in Iran's ancient culture, and the discount prices (about $5 for a gram of heroin, 50 percent pure) stem from proximity to the poppy fields of neighboring Afghanistan, experts, addicts and government officials agree that addiction has lately emerged as a corrosive new symptom of the country's economic failure, a marker for despair.
"You haven't got a job. You haven't got a family. You haven't got entertainment," said Amir Mohammadi, who at 30 has been an addict for 10 years. "For a few hours, you forget everything."
Heroin, a powerful derivative of opium, is taking hold among young people whose path to addiction typically stems from disappointment in the job market. A government poll shows almost 80 percent of Iranians detect a direct link between unemployment and drug addiction. Iran's government regularly fails to produce the 1 million jobs needed each year to accommodate the new workers entering the labor force from a baby boom still coming of age.
"We haven't reached the peak," said Roberto Arbitrio, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Tehran. "Unfortunately, there's room for increase."
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TEHRAN -- If he could afford it, Ali Nariman would drink beer, he says. But like most Iranians, he is poor, and so takes his solace in the form of a small gray ball of opium.
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Redskins Leave It All Behind
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IRVING, Tex., Sept. 19 -- There was no indication the Washington Redskins were capable of scoring a touchdown, much less staging a miracle comeback and ending the curse of the Dallas Cowboys, 14-13. Trailing by 13 points, still looking for the first trip to the end zone this season and facing an offensive crisis, quarterback Mark Brunell heaved a pretty pass on fourth and 15 from the Dallas 39-yard line, hitting Santana Moss in stride with less than four minutes to play.
It was just the beginning. Suddenly, Dallas's lead was six, and when a holding penalty negated the Cowboys' apparent first down a minute later, it became clear the Redskins would get the ball back at least one more time. Their final drive began with 2 minutes 52 seconds left, and no timeouts, and on the second play Brunell put everything he had into the ball, unleashing a 70-yard bomb over the middle. Moss outraced cornerback Aaron Glenn and safety Roy Williams and did not stop running until he hit the wall behind the end zone.
Nine months after enduring a horrendous loss on a last-second bomb in that same end of the field, the Redskins reached ecstasy there, silencing a sellout crowd. Their streak of nine straight losses at Texas Stadium was snapped.
"That's one of the great moments for me," Coach Joe Gibbs said. "I can tell you that."
Washington had not scored a touchdown for the first 116 minutes of the season, then, shockingly, produced two huge strikes in 71 seconds. After losing 14 of their last 15 against the Cowboys, the Redskins (2-0) had finally snatched a victory from Dallas; last December it was Washington's clock management that doomed its ability to hold a late lead, and tonight the same fate befell its rivals.
"We just hung in there," Moss said during a postgame television interview, "and knew all we needed was a couple of plays to turn this game around."
The Cowboys had one more chance to salvage this evening -- an occasion on which former stars Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith were honored at halftime -- and it looked as if they would do just that. Tyson Thompson took a kickoff back to the Washington 48 -- rookie kicker Nick Novak was forced to intervene between him and a chance to score. Safety Sean Taylor, who was burned on the game-winning touchdown here last December, broke up a third down pass, and on fourth and four, cornerback Walt Harris, who had a heroic game, kept the Cowboys a yard from getting where they needed to go.
Dallas had controlled the tempo of this game, taking a 10-0 lead on a 70-yard flea flicker, continually sacking Brunell. Washington again turned the ball over and committed penalties, but found a way to earn a memorable win despite all of it, and heads into the bye week on an emotional high, when for so long, it seemed that the Cowboys would be the victors. But then everything changed.
"When it came down to the end of the game they kind of got soft," wide receiver David Patten said of the Cowboys' late defensive coverage, "because they thought we were out of the game."
Despite their inability to accrue yardage the Redskins trailed by just a field goal coming out of halftime, then quarterback Drew Bledsoe executed the flea-flicker, spotting Terry Glenn streaking down the right side with Taylor and cornerback Shawn Springs caught hopelessly behind. Jose Cortez added a 41-yard field goal to pad the lead in the fourth quarter, but it was not enough.
Washington needed a complete reversal, and got it.
This first half in Dallas was as ugly as anything from 2004, perhaps worse. The turnovers lingered -- a fumble and an interception, the offensive line proved as willing as ever to commit false-start and holding penalties. That drastic Week 1 quarterback change, from Patrick Ramsey to veteran Brunell, did nothing to engender a resurgence. For all of the talk of an improved downfield attack, with speedy new wide receivers Moss and Patten, it had yet to manifest on the field.
Washington could not move the ball on the ground or through the air, forcing the defense to spend an inordinate amount of time on the field in the staggering heat here, while the Cowboys controlled the clock (nearly 10 minutes of the first quarter) and dominated field position. The Redskins gained just five first downs in the first half, and mustered a grand total of 85 yards of offense on 28 plays (a shocking average of three yards per play). Twice in the half, drives died with Brunell sacked, once negating any chance for a field goal.
They repeatedly began drives inside their 20-yard line. The offensive line succumbed to procedural penalties and repeatedly left Brunell to dangle amid blitzing linebackers. It appeared Washington's offense could not possibly get worse after last season, but it seemed to be regressing. The 15 points per game, the 30th ranked attack, the puny five yards per passing attempt.
The Redskins, 4-15 against the NFC East since 2002, had one play for more than 10 yards in the opening 30 minutes -- Brunell mustered 56 yards passing and the two times he had receivers open deep he underthrew Moss and Patten, with cornerback Anthony Henry breaking up both plays. With no semblance of a passing game, running back Clinton Portis (52 yards) was easily contained.
But Dallas was not much better. Cortez missed a 31-yard field goal, and when Brunell was intercepted in Washington territory, all the Cowboys could produce was a field goal. They led 3-0 at the half, and the Redskins were still a few hours away from a most improbable win.
"We didn't play our best ball," said Joe Bugel, assistant coach-offense, "but we just played with a lot of heart."
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Info on Washington Redskins including the 2004 NFL Preview. Get the latest game schedule and statistics for the Redskins. Follow the Washington Redskins under the direction of Coach Joe Gibbs.
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