(no subject)

Dear God -

My birthday is coming up soon, and I've been precisely the human being You expected me to be, You being omniscient and all that. Also, that whole predestination thing that I picked up somewhere (maybe the Puritans, but I'm sure You can better advise me) tells me that You knew how I would be when You allowed me to be born.

So I'll tell you what I want for my birthday. I'm guessing that I haven't gotten You and Santa Claus really mixed up and I get a birthday present for being exactly who I should be. Also, look at it this way. That counts as a miracle, and then I'll stop talking smack about you.

For my birthday, I want an H&K P7M13 - yeah, the rare one - with a politician-seeking attachment. I'd also like a field guide to my natural prey, which I assume would be a directory of Members of Congress.

See, here's the deal, God. I can't imagine that You intended for me to let something like Rick Santorum considering charging the doctors who didn't evacuate NO and did save lives, or the poor people who had no money or transport to evacuate just pass right by on the ol' radar screen. Course, sometimes I think that You might not have meant for America to happen, but You're omniscient and Your wisdom is beyond my ken, I'm sure. So I'm guessing that Your ineffable Divine Plan (run it past an ordinary five year old child yet?) is for me to solve some of the more noisome problems we face.

Remember, that's an H&K P7M13. An MP5, while nice, is not necessarily the right tool for the job. And I'd like to do the job right, because clearly every time I use Your gift will be a devotion unto You.

Cass

It's not quite as good as an actual JOB, but I'll take it.

I just got a new computer at work. I feel sure this must mean that they're starting the next round of computer upgrades, because I'm still a temp.

But that is not the point.

The point is this one.

I have a 74.4 GB harddrive now.

I'll be the one driving the dumptruck to work tomorrow, with ALL my cds in it. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The insanity, it continues.

Go. Read.

In sum - and this should be enough to turn your hair white - the press are being thrown out of New Orleans - they are being banned because the government doesn't want people to know how many bodies are found.

Whether or not you believe that these photos should be seen (personally, I'm not in favour of gore on the cover of Newsweek) this is the sinking of the First Amendment. This is the end of freedom of the press.

Unless we do something.

Call the White House, 202-456-1111, and let them know that there is still freedom of the press - there is no national security issue in this disaster -- there should be nothing to hide when the goal is to seek the truth about what happened.

Whether or not this is an issue of "common decency" as FEMA is trying to play it is irrelevant. Common decency comes into play at the newspaper, magazine, media outlet level - not the government's. The government doesn't get to hide the number of people killed in this hurricane to sanitise its own image.

The numbers of dead will not be less if we don't know about them. But we as a people will be diminished if we let the government cover their own asses in this matter. This isn't about decency. This is about looking better at a time that the government looks awful. Don't let them clean themselves this way.