He makes the other guy who’s not going to give presents look like a saint:

. . . an employee approached me and said, “Would you like to give a dollar for Hurricane Katrina?”

I said, “No.”

First off, I’m offended that the store employees are wandering around fundraising instead of helping customers, especially when it’s so obvious that the store conglomerate uses these do-it-yourself machines to cut down on the number of employees necessary to help customers so that the store conglomerate can turn a larger profit while having fewer of those pesky union workers to deal with.

But beyond that, I’m sick of footing the bill for George W. Bush and the rest of his so-called compassionate conservatives. It’s been well-documented over the past two days that there were all kinds of warnings about what could happen to New Orleans and that the levees designed to keep out the water were sinking or uncompleted.

What did Bush do? Nothing. Actually, worse than nothing. He was so busy fighting his cowboy war in Iraq (cheers to Hugo Chavez for the analogy) that he actually diverted money away from the projects that might have saved New Orleans because the war was so damn expensive! And now I should pony up to help out? Sorry, Charlie. . . .

You 60 million losers who voted for this loser open YOUR wallets. This president declared war on the poor long ago, and while some of us cared enough to vote for someone who gave a damn, you buried your heads in the sand, babbled about abortion and family values, and voted for the doofus.

And now you want to act all high and mighty and come asking me for a buck or two to help these poor people? Sorry, Charlie. Take an extra buck or two out of the fund you set aside to buy seventeen Support Our Troops magnets to stick all over your car to show how patriotic you are.

You want disaster relief? Impeach George W. Bush.

Patrick Ruffini has more.

Update: This post is, in its own way, even more disturbing:

I’m not going to post the piece I started to write.

My original reaction to the Katrina catastrophe was going to be: “NOT ONE DIME.”

For an hour or so, I contemplated the idea of turning it into a crusade: No-one in the blue states (where the money is) should give one dime of aid to the victims of this hurricane, which devastated Bush-friendly regions.

Why did I flirt with such a callous attitude?

Because it should be obvious to all that this tragedy was not just an act of God. Dubya and his diety conspired to transform mere disaster into an unprecedented mega-catastrophe.

Scientists warn us to expect more Katrinas. Global warming — the existence of which W would prefer to rationalize away — caused the temperature of the sea’s surface to rise in the Gulf of Mexico, thereby transforming what should have been a manageable hurricane into a monster.

The National Guard was off in Iraq stealing oil — and everything else in that nation — all to benefit Haliburton and the oil companies. They could have been in N.O. earlier, building levies, overseeing evacuation.

Bush financially eviscerated the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The money went to his Iraq debacle. . . .

So why was I thinking of starting a movement against giving aid to the stricken areas?

Because these are red states. They voted for Bush. These ninnies obviously wanted these policies, and they deserve to live with the consequences of their votes.

A large part of me still believes that many of these W-worshipping numbskulls deserve to suffer and to die. They brought it on themselves. Let them look to Jayzuss for aid: It’s time they stopped leeching off the more productive blue staters. . . .

So, at least, I started to write. But then (to paraphrase the old song) I thought I’d better think it out again.

Many of the victims, the ones who have suffered the most, are poor. The hardest hit were the blue state folk living among the red state maniacs. New Orleans, we should note, went heavily for Kerry.

And that’s why we must help. Although it was very tempting to say otherwise.

But let us make one thing clear: We WILL politicize this issue.

From Brendon:

I just hope Brad doesn’t find out that while he was out getting his roots done like some kind of homo, I totally got it on with a picture of his girlfriend. Checkmate, pretty boy.

* * *

Of course, between a baby and an STD, STD’s are what you have to worry about because, obviously, you can’t drown an STD.

* * *

“We considered Sharon because she’s a good actress and she still looks hot enough at 47 to wear see thru dresses like in the pictures below my quote, but she’s also an insufferable bitch and egomaniac who does nothing but complain and thinks actors should rank above nuns who sponge lepers in Calcutta and Batman on everyone’s list of international heroes.”

From Daily Kos:

Right now, with the humanitarian situation on the Gulf Coast already worse than imaginable, anyone who can – anyone with any human decency – must be called upon to make a sacrifice and help out our fellow men and women.

So here’s my proposal. I don’t even think it’ll be that painful. I’m just not going to be giving any holiday gifts when December comes around this year. Instead, I’m going to give whatever I might have spent on presents to hurricane relief efforts instead. Goodness knows that the Gulf Coast refugees need it more than anyone I know needs a new video game or handbag.

I hope you’ll consider joining me. I think your friends and family will understand if you explain your decision to them . . .

I understand that all of this is very serious but isn’t this a slight perversion of the core of “sacrifice”?

Click through to read the comments to that post. The people of Daily Kos think this is a bang-up idea.

Last week John Hinderaker had a very powerful post about casualty numbers, noting that if all you know is the number of dead, and not the context of surrounding events, then almost any military endeavor looks like a bad idea verging on catastrophe:

One wonders how past wars could have been fought if news reporting had consisted almost entirely of a recitation of casualties. The D-Day invasion was one of the greatest organizational feats ever achieved by human beings, and one of the most successful. But what if the only news Americans had gotten about the invasion was that 2,500 allied soldiers died that day, with no discussion of whether the invasion was a success or a failure, and no acknowledgement of the huge strategic stakes that were involved? Or what if such news coverage had continued, day by day, through the entire Battle of Normandy, with Americans having no idea whether the battle was being won or lost, but knowing only that 54,000 Allied troops had been killed by the Germans?

Hinderaker’s point is well taken, particularly when he gets to the matter of casualties in times of peace:

The media’s breathless tabulation of casualties in Iraq–now, over 1,800 deaths–is generally devoid of context. Here’s some context: between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. . . .

That’s right: all through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present. Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, I don’t recall any great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the President’s home town. In fact, I’ll offer a free six-pack to the first person who can find evidence that any liberal expressed concern–any concern–about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.

Along this same vein, I received this email the other day:

My father served as a B-24 pilot in WWII. I’ve been researching his service and the conditions under which this 20 year old flew 43 combat missions. During WWII 35,946 airmen died in accidents (other than battle deaths). Even the training is beyond our modern day comprehension. There were a total of 3,502 fatalities in primary, basic and advanced flight training. My Dad was part of the 450th Bomb Group (720th, 721st, 722nd and 723rd Squadrons) known as the Cottontails. Each squadron consisted of approximately 15 planes. During the 18 plus months they were a unit, 1,505 men were killed or missing in action. Could we or would we tolerate such losses today?

The source for these figures, my emailer tells me, is Stephen Ambrose’s The Wild Blue (page 68). And his point is well taken, too.

This time, filing an op-ed for The Onion, about March of the Penguins:

Has anyone ever heard of production values? It’s one of the most vital aspects of the filmmaking art, and you don’t get it by just showing up on an iceberg and filming whatever happens to be in front of you. Frankly, for real icebergs, they looked fake. . . .

What kind of a world do we live in when a futuristic techno-thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as escaped clones on levitating jet bikes doesn’t outgross the shit out of a glorified Discovery Channel rerun? Don’t people realize how much money I spent?

I know there’s an election later this month, but I am still somewhat surprised by the sentiments of the German government with regard to the Gulf Coast disaster. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has now issued two statements of willingness to help, Interior Minister Otto Schily (an old friend of John Ashcroft) has said his country is ready to provide assistance, and just today Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called Condoleezza Rice, telling her the same thing.

Wasn’t New Orleans French?

The best story on bestiality you’ll ever read.

If you can pick out the meanest insult:

In theory, it still dates Jake Gyllenhall and Bloom still dates Kate Bosworth. And that’s where the mystery deepens. Why Orlando pretends to date girls to begin with is confusing, but the thought of him banging Dunst just makes my skin crawl. Despite erotic urban legends to the contrary, sex with a baby-toothed ghost yields surprisingly little satisfaction.