AddieStan

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- On the line at McDonald's on Canal Street (it can't all be gumbo and jambalaya, y'all), your blogstress, wearing press tags, was approached by a woman in her 30s or 40s, who offered a piece of paper bearing the following message: What is Esther's Haven House? Esther's Haven House is a non-profit organization that provides emergency safe accomodations for battered women and children. These women are housed free of charge and given the tools to restore their lives. Temporary refuge, job placement assistance, security, access to healthcare, childcare assistance and referral to educational resources for children are all provided. Our ultimate goal is resettlement of the family in a new, safe environment. ALL FREE OF CHARGE. We help as many women as our resources allow. If you want to help us help these families, please make a donation today! Esther's Haven House • 1900 St. Claude Avenue For More Information Contact: Kiesha Keller 504-872-946...

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- New Orleans legend Dr. John has a message for your blogstress's devotees, and for all Washington liberals. Check it out on TAPPED, the Weblog of The American Prospect Online .

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- In the coming days, your blogstress will be posting audio she gathered in New Orleans. In the meantime, your Webwench's devotees can satisfy their aural needs with the debut segement of Radio Free AddieStan. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO RADIO FREE ADDIESTAN

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- Reginald Halsey is a nice-looking, compact man of some 50 years, perhaps -- dark-skinned with greying hair, his two front teeth rimmed in gold. His bus driver's uniform is pressed just so. Your blogstress met Mr. Halsey on Monday, when he helmed the motor coach that followed a group of Democratic congressmen and congresswomen as they toured sites that offered clues to the state of things in the New Orleans area in the year that has passed since Hurricane Katrina had her way with the city. After we traveled through the Ninth Ward -- the site of the worst flooding during Katrina -- and St. Bernard Parish, we found ourselves stopped at a light on the London Avenue Canal. "This here canal," he said quietly, to no one in particular, "is the one that took my house." As we continued through his neighborhood in line with the bus full of congresspeople, Mr. Halsey became a tour guide of his own journey. We passed a number of boarded-up commercial ...

NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- The social clubs and brass bands of New Orleans today led a traditional jazz funeral march to mourn Katrina's dead and celebrate the rescue workers and first responders who answered the call of the storm. The march route began at the infamous convention center, the site of so much of Katrina's misery, to the Superdome, the site of more. Herewith some visuals from today's event:

NEW ORLEANS, LA -- Great piece today from Peter Whoriskey of the Washington Post , detailing the lack of resources making their way to the Gulf Coast for post-hurricane rebuilding: Fewer than 5 percent of the thousands of destroyed homes are being rebuilt, local officials said. Most of the affected homeowners in Mississippi and Louisiana have yet to see any of the billions in federal money approved to help them get back home. CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE PIECE.

In the Ninth Ward. 2006 © A.M. Stan NEW ORLEANS, LA. -- Today your blogstress took a little tour of New Orleans, courtesy of the Democratic Caucus and the Army Corps of Engineers. The tour was organized for members of Congress, who wanted to check in on the progress on post-Katrina rebuilding. In all honesty, except for a wonderful Habitat for Humanity project in the upper Ninth Ward called Musicians Village , the news is not good. Devastation still abounds. Democratic members of Congress at Musicians Village with Jim Pait (front), executive director of New Orleans Habitat for Humanity. 2006 © A.M. Stan In the lower Ninth Ward, which was the scene of the most death and destruction -- the television pictures of people on rooftops and corpses floating in the currents -- there is still no electricity. There is no sewage service. There is no any kind of service. And so, there are no people, because FEMA will not give you a trailer unless there is electricity and running water on ...

Radio Free AddieStan - Part 1 Introduction to debut show To listen now, just click the "play" button on the Hipcast bar. MP3 File Commentary by your blogstress on what the callous response to Hurricane Katrina said about our nation's regard for jazz Featuring music by the One Man Chris Stan Band and Adele Stan Introductory theme: "Intuite" by Pierre Bensusan On Katrina and Jazz (c) 2006 Adele M. Stan "Things Don't Seem the Same (Something Smells Texas-sized Funny)" (c) 2006 Chris Stan "Intuite" (c) 2000 Dadgad Music

photography: Robbie Caponetto for Cottage Living magazine Marianne Cusato's version of the Katrina Cottage is a dignified alternative to the FEMA trailer. For emergency housing, the 308-square-foot cottage is remarkably inviting with a traditional front porch, exposed rafter tails, and clever storage to maximize space. Text and photograph from Cottage Living magazine. Speaking of Hurricane Katrina, this feature in Cottage Living magazine reveals a tour de force in affordable housing: the Katrina cottage, a trailer-mounted little house that can be used as the core of a new, permanent abode. And get this: one of these starting-over homes costs no more than FEMA pays for one of those trailers it has sitting in yards controlled by the Bechtel Corporation, while former Gulf Coast residents remain scatted throughout the U.S. Alas, the federal government apparently wants no part of this sensible rebuilding effort, and so it is left to private entities to fund. Here's how you ca...

Forgive, mes amis , your poor blogstress, who has been so innundated with work that she has not been able to bestow her ususal shower of wit on her devotees. Foremost among your Webwench's preoccupations has been her prepartions for this weekend's journey to New Orleans, from whence she will report on the various activities commemorating the anniversary of the landing of Hurricane Katrina. With any luck, she will be posting audio material as well as her written stream of consciousness -- if her ailing computer permits. In the meantime, she welcomes your thoughts about the grander meaning of our nation's response to the Gulf Coast tragedy.

mp3 file You thought your blogstress was pulling your leg when she promised you a podcast, but herewith, dear reader, find a preview of Radio Free AddieStan, your Webwench's Web-based radio show in development. In its complete form -- to be launched in the coming week -- Radio Free AddieStan will feature political commentary, an interview with an artist, and an episodic radio play, "Coffee Nerves," written by Tim Caggiano and produced by Frank Gilligan of Beltway Sewer Productions. Here you will find, mes cheris , an artist segment from what will be our second show, featuring the incomparable J. Scales -- singer, songwriter, musican and poet. On her way to perform at the Serafemme Festival in West Hollywood, J. discusses her artistic process, and what it's like to move, as a performer, between the worlds of black and white, straight and gay, old school and hip-hop. The segment features J.'s music and poetry. Additional credits: Uh huh 2005 (c) J. Scales feat...

Your blogstress asks the forbearance of her devotees this morning as she struggles with the technology that will reportedly enable her to upload her podcast, Radio Free AddieStan, for your listening pleasure.

MSNBC is reporting that a British jet bound for Egypt has just made an emergency landing in Brindisi, Italy, because of fears of a bomb on board.

From reader Bill Schultz, your blogstress received this affirmation of her American Prospect Online essay, The Shylock Code , which examines the intent of Mel Gibson's defenders in their word-choices: So, uh, if Mel can build his own tabernacle , can't he build his own "12 Steps" program? "I am powerless over the 'Jews' and they have made my life unmanagable." I enjoyed reading your thoughts on Mel's Hell...Thanks for the good read. --Bill Schultz Topeka, Kansas (Where the new state motto is: "As BIGOTED as you think") The "tabernacle" to which Mr. Schultz refers is the Traditionalist Catholic chapel that Mr. Gibson has built near his home, so that he need not travel long distances to hear a Latin Mass. Here's Peter Boyer in a 2003 issue of The New Yorker : At home in California, Gibson worshipped until recently at a Traditionalist church some distance from their house in Malibu. Then he decided that he had the means, a...

It's the gift that just keeps giving: Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic tirade and those who leverage the hatred when Mel sustains criticism for having done so. In response to your blogstress's American Prospect Online essay, The Shylock Code , your cybertrix has received a variety of e-mails. Here is one she finds particularly amusing: So. Your article says, basically, that because YOU tell the truth when drunk, therefore EVERYONE must tell the truth when they are drunk. How stupid are you?   And above and beyond all of that: Mel has the RIGHT to believe as he wants, as we all do, that includes you. He does not practice discrimination at work as told by the countless number of Jewish employees/associates coming forward and claiming this. So he has NOT broken any law, not crossed any PC line. He has on countless occasions given charitably to many different causes.   The media, that includes you, needs to get off his back, leave him alone to heal his wounds, before this stupid ha...

Since the posting of her essay, The Shylock Code , at The American Prospect Online (now featured at CBS News Online ), your blogstress has received some very interesting e-mail. As expected, the piece certainly has smoked out some hard-core anti-Semites, as well as a couple of appreciative readers and one truly confused one. Let us begin with the perplexed: Your article on Mel Gibson leaves me cold.  I really don't understand the flip-flopping you were doing.  One minute you denounce that, God forbid you were taken as being Jewish, then the next minute you refer to Mel as speaking the truth.  Do you like Jews or do you hate Jews?  Which is it?  I am totally confused.   You seem to know all the Shylock words and what they mean.  Do you speak them often?   What are you trying to prove?   I have a lot of questions here but I don't think I will get one answered. --Flowkay Fear not, Flokay; your cybertrix is here to answer your questions. "The Shylock Code" essay is wri...

Somewhere along the way, as she mulled over the strife in the Episcopal Church, your blogstress apparently included a link to the blog of a conservative Episcopalian -- one dedicated to preserving the orthodoxy that banishes women from the pulpit and gay people from the clergy. The name of the blog is TitusOneNine , so named for a particular verse from St. Paul's letter to Titus: Speaking of the duties of a man of God, Paul writes of the importance of "holding firmly to the faithful word as respects his [art of] teaching, that he may be able both to exhort by the teaching that is healthful and to reprove those who contradict." Your Webwench's inclusion of the link to the conservative blog, TitusOneNine, brought forth this reply from a reader who prefers to be known as Wilspon, under the amusing, if irreverent, subject line, TightAssOnline: From your site I learned of the e-address of the starch-minded American wannebe Anglicans, TitusOneNine, and recommend a meditat...

Not a terrorism suspect. While doing her occasional perusal of newspapers from exotic locales, your blogstress came across this in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn : Leo gets stately reception in US By Our Correspondent WASHINGTON, Aug 9: Pakistan’s snow leopard Leo is on the front page of the State Department’s website, not as a terror suspect , but as a welcome guest . [Emphasis added by cybertrix.] The write-up, complete with six stately pictures of the regal visitor from the Naltar valley, describes Leo’s visit as demonstrating ‘the breadth of US-Pakistani relations’.

Crashing the centrist party at Slate, American Prospect editor Michael Tomasky disproves the "Dems-gone-McGovernite" braying of Lieberman partisans, and does so through the clever device of applying that logic to other current Democratic primary races, where it simply does not hold up. Similarly, Greg Sargent, on his blog The Horse's Mouth, presents a hypothetical mainstream-media news analysis piece that spins yesterday's terrorism news as being good for the Democrats. One wishes that the DNC would grab Sargent's line. Meanwhile, your blogstress's editor, Sam Rosenfeld, frets over what the anti-war rhetoric does for the Dems, while setting the politics of Connecticut into context: I agree that the upper-middle-class ascendancy within the Democratic Party over the past decades is a real phenomenon and a problematic one. But again, a Democratic primary in the richest state in the country -- a liberal, anti-war state, lacking any kind of modern populist poli...

Your blogstress asks for the prayers of her devotees in the wake of her publication, on The American Prospect Online, of her latest essay, The Shylock Code . Read it, and you'll understand why your Webwench requires this added cloak of spiritual protection. And while you're over at the Prospect, do have a look at their blog, TAPPED , where you'll find the musings of an array of clever writers.

It's been a while since your blogstress received bon mots from our friend, St. Jacques du Fenway, but yesterday's post, in which your Webwench suggested to to Joe Lieberman that he abandon his independent run and instead take an academic post somewhere, raised some hackles: Ma chère écrivaine, Please do not foist Lieberman on the pristine world of academia. What have we done to deserve such a punishment? --St. Jacques du Fenway

Given the president's statement , just minutes ago, on the apparently foiled U.K.-based terrorism plot, it seems quite clear to your blogstress that this latest turn of events will be used as yet another reason to further concentrate power in the executive branch. Yesterday we learned that the administration wants to revise the War Crimes Act to exempt the abuse of imprisoned "enemy combatants" from oversight by U.S. courts. We saw how AOL posted online the search history of one its subscribers, and we know that the U.S. is searching such information -- as well as your phone records -- without going to the courts for warrants. And sitting in the Senate is a bill supported by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter that would officially exempt the administration from obtaining the warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Hold on to your hats, don't use the phone, your e-mail or travel.

Because of the proliferation of material on the Joe Lieberman / Ned Lamont contest all over the blogosphere, your blogstress has had precious little to say about the primary for the Democratic nomination for Connecticut's Senate race. In short, her blogging colleagues have had that ground more than covered. However, the announcement by U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman that, having lost his primary race, he will run as an independent , has your Webwench a bit dazed. Does the senator not understand just how vain, pompous and sanctimonious this makes him look? Indeed, he seems intent on proving the accusations against him by the party's left wing: that he never really cared about the Democratic Party to begin with. Before he sacrifices every last shred of his dignity to his apparently massive ego, it would behoove Mr. Lieberman to step away from the Senate battle and take up an academic post for a while, from which he could maintain his public profile by becoming an analyst for a te...

As he so often is, the Washington Post 's E.J. Dionne shows himself once again to the the voice of reason among the nation's pundits: Some events are so important that the battle to interpret their meaning begins even before they happen. So it is with today's Democratic primary challenge to Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut. [...] There is, in any event, a major flaw in the claim that Lieberman's troubles reflect an end to the role of moderates in the Democratic Party: Lieberman is the one prominent moderate to receive serious opposition in this year's primaries. As Robert L. Borosage of the liberal Campaign for America's Future noted, antiwar Democrats limited their challenge to one of the most pro-Bush Democrats in one of the most Democratic states in the country. Moderate Democrats in Republican-leaning states were left largely undisturbed. Moreover, opposition to the war in Iraq and to Bush has spread well beyond the left. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Li...

A member of the board of the anti-choice group, Feminists for Life , has purchased the birthplace of feminist icon Susan B. Anthony, offering the probability of a new feminist museum with an anti-choice spin. If the group's name sounds vaguely familiar to your blogstress's devotees, it's likely because Jane Sullivan Roberts , wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, brought attention to the group when it was revealed that she had served as an executive vice president of the organization, and as its board counsel. Though revered by many white women as a symbol of their right to vote, few are aware of the racism exercised by Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton when they decided to leave black women out of the suffrage equation. In fact, Anthony and others in her circle were said to be quite motivated by the thought that the black man might achieve the right to vote before white women. One suffrage newspaper editorialized : What an insult to the women who have labored thirty year...

Your blogstress would like to think, that with the recently expressed consternation of the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, the Bush administration had hit bottom in its secrecy addiction and was soon to be on the road to recovery. But, alas, your Webwench knows that there are no depths to which these usurpers will not plunge, and that the consternation of Republicans regarding the administration's unconstitutional behavior usually amounts to nothing more than bluster. In today's New York Times , Mark Mazetti reports on the noise made by committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) over the Bush administration's classification of information contained in a portion of a committee report on its use of prewar intelligence. The portion in question focuses on Cheney pal Ahmad Chalabi and the role the latter's Iraqi exile group played in passing bad info to the U.S. Government. From the New York Times : Congressional officials said Thursday that they were puzzle...

From her friends at the Christian Newswire, your blogstress received a press release from a Rev. Jesse Lee Paterson (author of Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America ), who condemns "Hollywood insiders" and "media" (read: Jews) for picking on poor, suffering Mel Gibson: Now there appears to be an orchestrated campaign by some Hollywood insiders and media to personally destroy Gibson. Hmmm...From your Webwench's vantage point, it seems that Mr. Gibson is doing a pretty good job of destroying himself. These same people opposed Gibson’s blockbuster ‘The Passion of the Christ’ which despite opposition from liberals was a huge hit among audiences. These ‘smear merchants’ [blogstress's note: read 'Jews'] are using this incident to get back at Gibson. Note that Rev. Paterson recently partnered with the Heritage Foundation -- the grandaddy institution of the right wing -- to produce a conference on "Moral Reconstruction" in urban...

At last, actor Stephen Baldwin, brother of the famous actor and notorious liberal, Alec Baldwin, has found a way to differentiate himself from big bro and the rest of his brotherly pack: turn right. From a religious right public relations firm (and our side wonders why they're ahead), your blogstress received the following: Actor Stephen Baldwin Heads Lineup of Speakers At Revelation Generation Christian Music Festival On Labor Day Weekend King of Kings Skateboard Ministry Will Also Drop-In to Frenchtown, NJ to Perform a High-Adrenaline Skating Demo at the Festival FLEMINGTON, N.J., July 28 /Christian Newswire/ -- Joining an all-star music line up, several prominent speakers will be featured at Revelation Generation , a day-long Christian music festival over Labor Day weekend. Scheduled for September 2 at Revelation Farms in Frenchtown, NJ, actor Stephen Baldwin and Duffy Robbins top the list of speakers who will reach the teen and youth at the event with their own unique messa...

Where, oh where, can your blogstress be -- and why has she deprived her devotees of a post full of witticism today? Well, mes amis , your cybertrix had to indulge those people who believe her to be a serious journalist or commentator or something, and stand before a video camera at PoliticsTV.com and pontificate . (And you know how she just hates doing that!) This she did in her capacity as a contributor to TAPPED , the Weblog of The American Prospect Online . CLICK HERE TO VIEW YOUR BLOGSTRESS HOLDING FORTH. (And, yes, your Webwench is now painfully aware of just how badly she needs a haircut. No e-mails, please, on that subject.)