Life in the Third Layer

In case anybody is amazed that we didn’t get a good response to Katrina from the federal government, that the recovery money is going to the same large corporations that are absorbing the Iraq appropriations, and that Bush intends to suspend environmental regulations and exempt from inheritance taxes the estate of anyone who died in Katrina’s path that was worth more than 1.5 million dollars (I’m waiting to see who that person was) …
In case more tax cuts in spite of record deficits seem to you to be a little inconsistent with reality …
Remember Bush ran on a platform that said private individuals could spend money better than the federal government. His process since his election has been to cut, downsize, outsource, and let the people who have money keep more of it. His slow response to Katrina will enrich the rich and return more of our tax money to the “private sector,” defined as the pockets of his political base. Small properties of middle income and poor people in the flood area will become part of the holdings of large companies.
It is a scheme in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle goes away.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an administration that does something right in the first place instead of one that is so adept at investigating and explaining what went wrong after it bombs?

I live in a relatively quiet neighborhood close to downtown in a sleepy little city whose City Manager has the stated goal of making the city a retirement community. Not a lot goes on most days. My front yard is on one of those tree-lined streets, and my backyard is on an alley that gives access to garages and back yards. Kids play in the alley, cars slow down, and cats track softly over car windshields, unnoticed except on days when it rains and the tracks are muddy. Quite a few people find it pleasant to walk their friends, dogs, spouses, and children along the alley in the early mornings and late afternoons. It’s the “nod and say good morning” kind of alley.
Well, this good morning on my way to work I put my bag in the passenger side of my car in my open garage and take the three steps from the front door to the back bumper, see the person walking, and stop halfway into my “nod and say good morning.”
A woman whom I do not know is walking down the alley with a cute white and tan spaniel on a leash. She is enjoying the morning and doesn’t see me. In the time it takes for a nod to cancel, she stops beside my charming green utilities company trash can and holds the leash while her spaniel finds itself a spot. In this spot, where I would more than likely be standing if I went to take out the trash, the spaniel proceeds to do what dogs do.
The woman holds the leash patiently and continues to enjoy the summer morning serenity of my backyard, where just a drizzle of rain accents the quiet. I take a couple of steps toward her — it’s not, believe me, a large yard. She is less than 20 feet from me, patiently holding the dog’s leash while he makes a pile in my yard.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Do you know that this is my yard?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, startled. She waits for the dog to finish.
Feeling a need for a better response, I stand there and hold eye contact considering what to say. What she had done was, after all, illegal and not neighborly. Well, I guess it’s illegal. There’s a leash law. But the dog was on a leash, if you want to get particular.
“If you have a bag, I’ll clean it up,” she offers.
What does she mean, “If I have a bag”?
I tell her, “I am on my way to work. I do not have a bag.”
“I’ll come back and clean it up,” she says, pulling the dog away.
Either the rain washed it away (unlikely) or she came back and cleaned it up before I got home from work. But all day long I tried to remember the precise phrasing of that old kindergarten rule about what you do when nobody is looking.

I will leave that comment by JustaDog on my July 25 post, since it is a real comment by a person who read my blog.
What I can’t get over is how many Christians I meet who are willing to justify our illegal and inhuman treatment of prisoners by citing their atrocities. Of course I care about “executions performed by terrorists.” I care about the children who die in war, theirs and ours, and about the families torn apart, some of them forever. I do not believe insurgents are righteous or that any torture is acceptable. And I do not understand how when we torture prisoners it “resembles fraternity hazing.”
I will point out that when Sadam or insurgents commit atrocities they do not do so with my tax money while wearing the uniform and standing under the flag that I grew up saluting.

So there on the Daily Show was Rick Santorum with his new book, It Takes a Family talking about virtues. It is a little-known fact that the word “virtues” has specific meaning beyond “what Rick Santorum thinks we all would naturally have if we all had been raised by a mother and a father married and living together.” You can go to deadlysins.com (of course) and get a real rundown of what virtues are. It is not a simple matter, which probably puts it a bit beyond Rick Santorum.
The virtues, like the deadly sins, are traditionally seven. There are four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, courage, and justice; and three theological virtues: love, hope, and faith.
Another formulation of the virtues is the “contrary virtues,” so called because each of them protects us agains falling into one of the seven deadly sins, i.e., humility against pride, kindness against envy, abstinence against gluttony, chastity against lust, patience against anger, liberality against greed, and diligence against sloth.
Medieval Christian catechisms also included a list of seven good works: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, shelter strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, minister to prisoners, and bury the dead.
Looking at this list, it is not exactly clear to me how gay marriage is ruining the culture and keeping our children from learning the virtues. Maybe there is a Neo-Con formulation of the virtues where corporate greed is a good thing, government officials are above the law, and you can torture prisoners if you think they might be terrorists.

From Editor & Publisher, a journal covering newspapers:
Government Halts Release of More Photos and Videos of Abu Ghraib on July 25, 2005:

At the eleventh hour, lawyers for the Pentagon refused to cooperate with a federal judge’s order to release dozens of unseen photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Instead, the lawyers said they would file a brief explaining why they would not turn over the photos as ordered in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the ACLU.
Since the papers were sealed, Sean Lane, the government’s lawyer, said he could not discuss the contents. He did explain “that releasing pictures would violate Geneva Convention rules on prisoner treatment by subjecting detainees to additional humiliation or embarrassment.”
So the Pentagon, which has been okay so far with the administration’s claim that the Geneva Convention did not apply, is now using the Geneva Convention to counter a lawsuit under Freedom of Information by the ACLU.
I never bet the farm or my lunch money, but I’ll bet (one of those free bets where only my credibility will be at risk) that some of those photos, or all of them together, would further strain the administration’s stance that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was the work of “a few bad apples.”