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The Common Dreams site has posted an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, Volume One. It’s from the section of the book about his time spent in New Orleans recording Oh Mercy with Daniel Lanois. Here’s a bit of the excerpt.

There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better. There’s a thousand different angles at any moment. At any time you could run into a ritual honoring some vaguely known queen. Bluebloods, titled persons like crazy drunks, lean weakly against the walls and drag themselves through the gutter. Even they seem to have insights you might want to listen to. No action seems inappropriate here. The city is one very long poem. Gardens full of pansies, pink petunias, opiates. Flower-bedecked shrines, white myrtles, bougainvillea and purple oleander stimulate your senses, make you feel cool and clear inside.

Read the whole thing here or, better yet, read the whole book.

Listen to Oh Mercy today if you’ve got it. If you don’t have it, well then you’d best go buy yourself a copy today.

Watch the Martin Scorsese film, No Direction Home, that is airing on PBS Monday and Tuesday night.

What strange days these last two have been. Yesterday Bush actually accepted responsibility for the Federal Government’s failures in responding to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. And tonight, Bush gave a special address to the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans in which he said the government would take on the huge costs of rebuilding the devastated areas of the Gulf Coast.

“The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen,” Bush said. He praised Americans for giving generously for disaster relief, saying the fund led by former Presidents Bush and Clinton had received pledges of more than $100 million.

Rebuilding across the devastated region is expected to cost $200 billion or more in the near term. The final tab could approach the more than $300 billion spent thus far on U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has already approved $62 billion for the disaster, but that is expected to run out next month.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., speaking after the president’s address, said the recovery programs would add to the nation’s debt. GOP leaders are open to suggestions from lawmakers to cut government spending elsewhere, he said.

Yes, the recovery programs will add to our nation’s debt. But just how bad is the debt? Take a look at this chart and see for yourself.

Chart via Bartcop. (Visit the site. It’s full of fun stuff.)

That chart shows the deficit before taking into account any spending on Gulf Coast recovery or the Iraq War in 2005. Obviously, our government needs to take in more money to carry out its agenda without going bankrupt. Will the majority party start pushing for tax increases to pay for these projects?

Those of you like me, who have not yet donated to a charitable relief organizaton that will help care for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, have probably asked yourself several times why you haven’t given any money yet. When you think about the disaster, you know that the people of New Orleans need your help, but you don’t act because you think in some way you would be giving in to the current social political system that you cannot stand. I hadn’t tried to work through these thoughts until today when I read Ted Rall’s column. He has put into words the troubling thoughts that I’ve been too lazy to sort through and write about.

Government has been shirking its basic responsibilities since the ’80s, when Ronald Reagan sold us his belief that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on “big government” to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities. The Katrina disaster, whose total damage estimate has risen from $100 to $125 billion, marks the culmination of Reagan’s privatization of despair.

(snip)

It’s ridiculous, but people evidently need to be reminded that the United States is not only the world’s wealthiest nation but the wealthiest society that has existed anywhere, ever. The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather–if helping them is a priority. That goes double for Katrina, a disaster caused by the government’s conscious decision to eliminate the $50 million pittance needed to improve New Orleans’ levees.

(snip)

Granted, in terms of popularity of likelihood of success, trying to make a case against giving money to charities compares to lobbying against puppies. The impulse to donate, after all, is rooted in our best human traits. As we watched New Orleanians die of thirst, disease and anarchic violence in the face of Bush Administration disinterest and local government incompetence, millions of us did the only thing we thought we could to do to help: cut a check or click a PayPal button. Tragically, that generosity feeds into the mindset of the sinister ideologues who argue that government shouldn’t help people–the very mindset that caused the levee break that turned Katrina into a holocaust and led to official unresponsiveness. And it is already setting the stage for the next avoidable disaster.

It’s time to “starve the beast”: private charities used by the government to justify the abdication of its duties to its citizens.

Governments should help people. Helping people is one of the main reasons that governments exist. The citizens of New Orleans paid taxes, and government failed them. Now everyone is passing the cup to help them out. I still might decide to donate some money, but I won’t feel all that great about it.

Truth is I feel better about giving money to organizations who fight against Bush’s destructive policies and to politicians running against Republican foot soldiers for Bush.

New fishing shirt – $60
New fishing rod – $80
19 foot fully-equiped bass boat – $26,000……

….Getting to go fishing with your Dad on Bourbon Street in contaminated water amongst the starving that survived…..
Priceless !!!

Things are very, very bad in New Orleans.

Go to This Modern World for extensive coverage and commentary about how messed up things are and how the Bush Administration is responsible for a lot of it because of budget policy and the Iraq War.

Also, read Molly Ivins today.

…in June, Bush took his little ax and chopped $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. As was reported in New Orleans CityBusiness at the time, that meant “major hurricane and flood projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

(snip)

Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana’s National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.