D points out that former governor Edwin Edwards is waiting to learn if his sentence will be commuted.
… Edwards and former Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown are among the more than 2,000 people convicted of federal crimes awaiting word on whether President Bush will give them a pardon or commute their sentences during his final months in office.
Drops on the 4th of July like my daddy done did.
“Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for objective journalism which is true but they miss the point.”
“I am tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
“A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.” What’s worse, that the federal government is so tight-fisted when it comes to domestic infrastructure and recovery projects while it misplaces this much money in foreign boondoggles or that 1£ is $1.96?
Never fear. My hero, Henry Waxman, is on the case. “It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.” In Where Did All The Cash Go In Iraq?, Waxman asks, “Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?”*
know exactly where your money is going.
Mark Folse saw the Hot 8 Brass Band perform at Jazzfest and wrote about it. Little Dinerral Shavers, Jr., also known as DJ, performed with the band. As you probably know by now, his father, Dinerral Shavers, music educator and Hot 8 bandmember, was shot dead right in front of his family at the end of 2006. Since then, Shavers’s alleged murderer, David Bonds, has twice walked out of court free due to unwilling witnesses and possible witness intimidation. It is hard to look at Mark’s pictures of DJ; I wish I could bring his dad back. In the absence of such an ability, donate to the fund set up for his education. (At the time of this post, the DSEF website is experiencing problems in Internet Explorer. Please go back later once the Donate button is fixed for all browsers.)
Without fail, on every drive from IAH to the west suburbs of Houston, I miss the same three exits and have to backtrack. Why can’t I simply remember that the signs for Beltway 8 and the I-10 are going to sneak up on me right after the onset of a comfortable highway hypnosis, and that there are no signs for Dairy Ashford or Eldridge Parkway when driving west on I-10? It is an inevitability that I see the Katy exits before my internal backseat driver comments, “Hey, ding ding, wake up! You’re five exits past the one you want.” Committing these snippets of Tex-arcana to memory would spare me an extra 45 minutes and $2.50 spent on the beautiful yet exceptionally lengthy stretches of road here.
Plane rides are great opportunities for meditation. Last evening, I thought of Hunter S. Thompson and how, even three years after his death, I still cannot bring myself to read The Joke’s Over. The book sits in the case, conspicuous through its crisp jacket and uncracked spine. What a wuss. Who buys books not to read them? Yes, HST took his own crazy life in his own crazy style (or did he?) and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Worse than his death is envisioning him at a ripe old age confined to a nursing home. Inconceivable. On top of it all, his ashes were shot out of a giant potato cannon. We should be so lucky. So, why is his passing still so hard to stomach? It’s nothing but a case of not coming to terms with the fact that people – My People – aren’t givens.
Landed at 8pm. Got to the hotel room at 9:45pm. Crashed on the bed out of sheer exhaustion and remembered I hadn’t eaten dinner and was headed for a hypoglycemia attack.
Ravenous, I arrived at the hotel restaurant 10 minutes before closing time. Now dig this: The server remembered me from almost four years ago and told me exactly where I was from, where I’d sat, and what I ate. Amazing or creepy? Take your pick. While I waited for my meal, he walked up and asked how New Orleans is doing and somehow (somehow, she says) we got to talking about systemic corruption in New Orleans, his native country of Mexico, and India. “It’s a way of life everywhere. Americans just know how to hide it better.” “New Orleans doesn’t,” I replied. Following this serious exchange, he told me a really bad joke about Jesus which I immediately forgot. It was that bad.
As I walked out of the restaurant, the nice server waved goodbye and said, “See you around some time. My name is Gonzo.”
Hunter Stockton Thompson July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005
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