Dont5 have time to diary this fully, or even jto run speclgcheck, but guess what!!! Something is being kreported as a lead storry on all the major news websites, and I READ ABOUT IT!@@@!!!

Obviously there's not ktime to search the diary lists to see if, say, the lastt four diaries posted are about the samme topic, becauser I want to post this while it's STILL BREAKINGjkl!!!!!!

A few months ago I laughed at this Colbert clip about AT&T's latest land-grab.

Today I began at about 10 a.m. trying to cancel my ATT and BellSouth services. I had access to the following assets:

*an internet connection
*a phone connection
*fluency in English
*a serious 'tude
*a car
*a mom

I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words to you: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
--Horace Mann, 1st president of Antioch College

Hey, sorry if I'm jumping the gun and stepping on toes, but just in case nobody was gonna do a WYFP thread tonight, I'm here to ask what your fuggin' problem is.

WYFP?

Wake Island was, until two days ago, home to about 200 people. They have been relocated to Hawaii. (I don't know about pets.)

This Compounding Pharmacy is straight out of the 1950s, inside and out-- one of those places that would be charming in the North but in the South tends to be sorta creepy. The workers are all white, and sort of marcelled and old-fashioned. So I went in and handed over my prescription and sat down on a little wooden bench that Norman Rockwell would have liked to paint.

She and her husband have been married several years. She (let's call her Bobbie-Ann) is an American-born U.S. citizen. Her parents and grandparents are American-born. Bobbie-Ann is as American as French fries. Er, as American as pizza. I mean as American as bagels. Anyway you know what I mean.

One of my grad students (let's call her Anastasia) came to me last night and told me she thought she'd made a Terrible Mistake. She and her husband had gone out to dinner Saturday night, and she'd told their waiter about the class. He'd been their waiter once before, she stressed.

I waited to hear what the Terrible Mistake was.

U.S casualties in Afghanistan are at 259, with 2005 by far the deadliest year of the four we've spent there. "Coalition" casualties there total 324.

Seems to me that folks down there are protesting Bushco's alleged policies, just like we like to do up here, except that there the security forces aren't quite so careful about making sure he doesn't have his eyes sullied by us.

But it does intensify hurricanes, tropical storms and typhoons. Here's the death toll from this summer's crop, as near as I can figure.

Yesterday the Senate rejected a motion to set up a congressional commission to investigate "federal, state and local response" to Hurricane Katrina.

This post is actually by my brother, CaliforniaShoes. He's comparing the government reaction this past week to the government reaction the last time an American city was destroyed - San Francisco, April 18, 1906.

The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.

By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the mayor.

By 8 AM they were patrolling the entire downtown area and searching for survivors.

The second quake struck at 8:14 AM.

By 10:05 AM the USS Chicago was on its way from San Diego to San Francisco; by 10:30 the USS Preble had landed a medical team and set up an emergency hospital.

By 11 AM large parts of the city were on fire; troops continued to arrive throughout the day, evacuating people from the areas threatened by fire to emergency shelters and Golden Gate Park.

St. Mary's hospital was destroyed by the fire at 1 PM, with no loss of life, the staff and patients having already been evacuated across the bay to Oakland.

By 3 PM troops had shot several looters, and dynamited buildings to make a firebreak; by five they had buried dozens of corpses, the morgue and the police pistol range being unable to hold any more.

At 8:40 PM General Funston requested emergency housing - tents and shelters - from the War Department in Washington; all of the tents in the U.S. Army were on their way to San Francisco by 4:55 AM the next morning.

Prisoners were evacuated to Alcatraz, and by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco, where it evacuated 20,000 refugees.

Of course, the technology of the day was fairly primitive, and the U.S. was a much poorer country. No doubt we could move more quickly today.

Source for times and dates.

Almost everyone has heard of the Trail of Tears, the forced march of the Cherokee from the east to the west, dying of dysentery and exposure along the way, drowning in the Mississippi by the hundreds. And a final death toll ending in zeroes--- 3,000? 4,000? But hardly anyone knows that it was the most unpopular action the 62-year-old nation had ever taken. That angry letters and petitions poured into Congress from all over the U.S. That there was a battle in Congress (which was lost, of course) to stop the removal.

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