Miss Sharon Jones and her Dap-Kings are coming to the House of Blues in these parts on January 24th. Yes, I got my tickets. Y'all go get some. And if you can't come, check these out:







Still not convinced? All right (cracking of knuckles) here goes:



So there.

I've got a few things on my mind these days, among them the ideas surrounding ruins, sprawl, and rebuilding....this whole idea that you might have to break a few eggs to make some omelets - or knock down some buildings to get with the new economic paradigm. In the process, I'm wondering if the new paradigm will be looking something like this:

...This Museum of Natural Phenomena was designed by architect Terry Nicholson to resemble a courthouse from the Bahamas which has been picked up by a hurricane and dropped, upside down, on to a citrus-packing warehouse in downtown Orlando. Designed in the neo-Palladian colonial style, the courthouse is literally upside-down, with palm trees dangling from the sky. The pediment shatters the pavement like a meteorite and visitors enter through a fissure in the masonry to stroll over the ceilings. The Rev. William Gilpin had declared in one of his Picturesque guidebooks of the 1770's that a country house in the symmetrical, boxy Palladian style could only be transformed into a Picturesque object by seizing a mallet and battering one half into a pile of rubble. He had never seen a hurricane.*

Which makes me wonder... if the rumor at the end of this post proves true and the folks at Victory wait for that more favorable lineup on the City Council, what will we be treated to in terms of the neo-Picturesque? If the developers of the demolished projects are held to their promises, will there be upside-down renditions of Lafitte on the properties? Is romanticized rubble and/or vacant lots touted as "back to nature" preserves in this city's future? Only time will tell. I really don't want anybody taking a mallet to my home, though.

*from In Ruins by Christopher Woodward

And, actually, the blurb about the WonderWorks says the following: This once top-secret laboratory was located in the Bermuda Triangle, when it was ripped from its foundation by a horrific tornado and carried thousands of miles away to International Drive, Orlando Florida. This tornado was created by scientists from around the world trying to find answers to the unexplainable. During their experiment, something went awry and the power of the tornado was unleashed throughout the laboratory. Remarkably, all of the experiments remained intact and functional. Tornado, hurricane...Bahamian courthouse, Bermuda lab...what's the diff?

Thanks to Poplicks and O-Dub for this one:

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -4.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.97

Huh.

Same quadrant as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.

No wonder I haven't gone in on the caucus handicapping that's been going around like the virus I'm fighting. Nobody appeals to me...and, most likely, no one in our political system as it is now ever will.

If, as Laureen Lentz reports, the homeless that are currently crowded beneath the Claiborne Avenue overpass will be cleared out of there for fear of contaminating Mardi Gras festivities in this twisted city of ours, I nominate this man to get a song together that puts their experience out there for all to listen to:



Maybe we can get a series of truck floats to bring up the rear of the truck parades on Mardi Gras day that are designed to blare out some stories and some related music for all the uptowners to hear concerning these folks. Because there but for the grace of God and higher ground go most of us who are uptown.

Plus, I just escaped some godawful weather in the Midwest - but I remember seeing homeless folks camped out under railroad overpasses in the 30-ish-degree pre-snow cold when I first got into Chicago. I've seen 'em curling up on bus stop benches off Dupont Circle in the nation's capital, even. Why can't we find a way to help these folks? Why do we seem to be creating more of them? Please, God, why can't we all just go home?

Update, 12:36 PM: And, along those same lines, comes some more awful news, this time on the private home front. Now I no longer have to rail at God about the subtle injustices and sometimes not-so-subtle prejudicial snobbery directed at me for being a stay-at-home mom. I need to start applying for a gun license, getting in some target practice, and working on being a defend-the-home mom. Forget my own private Idaho - I need my own private fortress just to keep my home intact at this rate...
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Incidentally, another reason to be thankful for the NOLA blogpocheh: we are a bunch of diligent fact and source checkers when we blog. A little item sent through my Queens' synagogue's listserve yesterday highlights the importance of this - even if it does add more to somebody's Aw Hell Naw Legend:

Will Smith, Hitler and Diminishing Value of Truth
By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, January 1, 2008

On Dec. 22, the Scottish newspaper The Daily Record published an article summarizing an interview its reporter Siobhan Synnot had with the superstar actor Will Smith. Near the end of the highly laudatory piece, the reporter wrote: "Remarkably, Will believes everyone is basically good" and immediately cited the actor saying: "Even Hitler didn't wake up going, 'Let me do the most evil thing I can do today,'" said Will. "I think he woke up in the morning and, using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was 'good.'"

What Will Smith said is probably true. Most of history's great evils were committed by people who somehow convinced themselves that the evil they did was really good. This is hardly a new problem. As the Prophet Hosea said 2,700 years ago, "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness" (Hosea 4:6).

Some years ago, I made a video on goodness ("For Goodness Sake") with the director David Zucker in which I said almost the same thing word for word, that few people who do evil wake up in the morning saying, "Ah, another day to do evil."

In his play "Incident at Vichy," playwright Arthur Miller depicts a Jewish doctor in Nazi Occupied France who seeks a corrupt Nazi to bribe in order to escape Hitler's genocide of the Jews. The Jewish doctor knows that if he finds an idealistic Nazi, he is doomed. Miller's point was that there were bestial Nazis who believed that what they were doing was good.

Yet, Will Smith, making the same point, was quoted around the world as saying that he thinks that Hitler was a good person.

Every Hollywood and celebrities Internet site I checked -- about 30 -- headlined that "Will Smith thinks Hitler was a 'good' person" (note that 'good' was put in quotation marks as if the headline was accurately quoting Smith).

And most then opened their phony report with this: "U.S. actor Will Smith has stunned fans by reportedly declaring that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was essentially a 'good' person."

A complete fabrication.

The lying about Smith was not confined to Hollywood and celebrity Web sites. For example, Rense.com, which calls itself "World's No. 1 Alternative News Service -- Your First Source for Reality and Honest Journalism," offered this headline (www.rense.com/general79/smith.htm), reprinting a World Entertainment News piece: "Will Smith -- 'Hitler Was Essentially a Good Person.'"

A Web site presumably credible to its readers put into quotation marks something Smith never said.

Even some responsible sites completely distorted what Smith said. YNETnews.com wrote: "Hollywood superstar Will Smith told Scottish newspaper The Daily Record recently that he was convinced Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler did not fully understand the extent of the pain and suffering his actions would cause during his time in power in the 1930s and '40s."

Smith said that? Where? When? YNET -- to repeat, a usually responsible site -- made up that whole statement.

And, of course, millions of Internet readers believe all this, and then the sites publish readers' comments based on the lie the site published -- such as this one at YNET about "Will Smith losing millions of fans, being another Mel Gibson … "

To their credit, the mainstream print and electronic news media rarely misquoted Smith, but when they did cover it, the coverage was unhelpful and occasionally irresponsible.

The New York Post's gossip column, "Page Six," wrote this on Dec. 30: "December 27, 2007 -- Will Smith wisely backed away from comments he made to a Scottish reporter about Adolf Hitler." In fact, Smith never "backed away" from his comments, and there was nothing to back away from.

The Chicago Tribune column "Red Eye" opened its Dec. 24 report on Will Smith with this: "Will Smith likes to think there's good in everybody. Even Adolf Hitler."

A headline in The Australian read, "Will Smith sees the good in Hitler."

And on Dec. 27, Scotland's premier newspaper, The Scotsman, reported -- even after Smith's clarification -- "Last week, however, the warm feeling for Smith turned distinctly chilly. In an interview with the Daily Record, he was quoted as saying Adolf Hitler had just been trying to do good."

Smith reacted to what he correctly called "an awful and disgusting lie" and denounced Hitler as "a vile, heinous vicious killer responsible for one of the greatest acts of evil committed on this planet." At that point, Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, announced, "We welcome and accept Will Smith's statement that Hitler was a 'vicious killer' and that he did not mean for his remarks about the Nazi leader to be mistaken as praise." That was good and necessary. But, like the irresponsible blogs, the ADL leader characterized Smith's original statement this way: "Unfortunately, in citing Hitler in what appears to be a positive context, Smith stirred up a hornet's nest on the Internet, where hate groups and anti-Semites latched on to the remark and praised it."

But Will Smith never cited Hitler in "a positive context," and Foxman should never have said that Smith did. By doing so, Foxman preserved the original lie. A group dedicated to opposing defamation should have opposed the defamation of Will Smith, not subtly contributed to it.

What is to be learned? The lessons are simple:

1. Don't trust a Web site that doesn't cite a reputable source for a news item (opinions columns have different standards).

2. Then, check that source.

3. Don't trust headlines in newspapers -- read the entire column.

4. When a person is quoted, read his original statement in context.

In the meantime, however, millions of people around the world will continue to believe the lie that Will Smith said that Hitler was a good man.

And the media will, apparently, pay no price.

Ahh, Chicago.

Great pizza.

Good schmoozing with friends and cousins of the husband.

Great football parties. Not-so-great football game results. For me, anyway. I was the only Saints fan at the cousins' home. What'd I expect? Jeffrey's right, anyhow. They did beat Atlanta twice, and, as Jack Nicholson said in Mars Attacks, "that ain't bad".

Nice cold ride into downtown on the el and an even colder walk to the Navy Pier. Kick-butt hands-on building at the Children's Museum there. Took in one of the last rides until Memorial Day of the free holiday trolley that took us to the department store formerly known as Marshall Field's - the Federated department store chain that has taken it over is a dirty word in the City of Big Shoulders. The little guy had enjoyed being in the snow up until that day in downtown. There was more than enough of it falling from the sky.

Today -

Dan is in Pasadena.

We are in the sunny cold of New Orleans, after watching our plane be de-iced at O'Hare. The de-icer had to jostle for position with that perennial favorite, the Gate Gourmet supplies truck.
On getting all our stuff in the car and high-tailing it home, I caught James Booker on the radio doing "Ain't Nobody's Business", and Bobby Lounge doing one of my personal faves, "Slime Weasel".

We're off to our neighbors to see if we can catch Dan and his dad in the stands at the Rose Bowl. I think Michigan's band just played "Springtime for Hitler" in their halftime performance. I really do need a drink, and my neighbors' keggerator might just be able to provide one.

I love this town.

Happy New Year, all!

Update, 1-2: Michael has some nifty ideas for bowl games sponsored by the folks who help perpetuate disasters. I now think "Springtime For Hitler" ought to have been performed at halftime in the Superdome. Where the heck's Nokia gone as the Sugar Bowl sponsor? Text messaging on cell phones was the only way anybody could get through to the outside world during 8-29 and its immediate aftermath. I'd think that Nokia would be boosted even more financially by sponsoring a sporting event in a recovering city such as this. Somestates can go jump.

I've been meditating on some recent reading, here. Bear with me.

After the Wall fell, two factors became shockingly clear. Firstly that the GDR's loudly trumpeted industries were almost entirely uncompetitive, both in the enlarged domestic and the wider international market. Secondly, that those skills, manpower and productive capital resources lost to the West in the post-war period were not coming back - or at least not in the quantities that would have made possible a genuine revival of the region's fortunes to pre-GDR levels.*

I've been thinking a lot about the haves and the have-nots over the last month or so. I guess one could argue that it's been on my mind in one way or another since 8-29...and even before that...

A while back, I was in my grandparents' synagogue for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, where I was witness to a comparison of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer with the events of 9-11 that made my blood boil. To the words "who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire", the rabbi added some to the effect of "who shall be on the 90th floor and live, and who shall be on the 92nd floor and perish." I wanted to run up to the bimah, the pulpit, and wring the man's neck right then and there. I vowed never to go back to my grandparents' synagogue as long as that man was still their rabbi (he only lasted another year or two as their rabbi, anyhow, but I still haven't returned there for services). What made me so angry? This crushing idea that we are fated to live and die in a way that we have no control over whatsoever. An idea that was of little comfort to at least one family in my grandparents' shul who had lost one of their own in the collapse of the Twin Towers. There is more than enough humbling of ourselves before God at the time of the Jewish New Year. This simply added injurious insult to metaphorical prayer.

The true 'punishment ' of the East - and the most insidious, lasting crime of its Communist masters - was this theft of hope.*

Injurious insult has been added in slow, torturous increments to the folks who are suffering in great numbers in these parts. This, the third year post-8-29 (check Maitri's for exactly what day it is - heh) is turning out to be a major test of our capacity to hope, and in keeping that hope alive, our capacity to work our butts off for change. It ain't easy by any stretch of the imagination. With city government and city services behaving badly, folks fighting for money to rebuild, the feds getting their war on in other countries and leaving our own country in the dust, and other assorted bits of rising crime rates, crumbling national infrastructure, and instances of downright selfish behavior on the rise...well...it's just a tad too easy to abandon ourselves to fate and let it all pass us by or carry us off.

All of us are feeling this strain in one way or another.

In my recent reading, though, I took some comfort in the fact that a wall that was built to keep people in East Germany for hundreds of years lasted only a little over a generation. Paradoxically, the Berlin Wall came down because the GDR wanted to keep its people from leaving in droves, which they were starting to do through the loophole of traveling to other then-Soviet bloc countries with more porous borders. Where there is a will, there is a way. Where hope is stolen, there is a means of stealing it back. Because, in the process of taking it back, we are taking back our own lives in the bargain.

Here's to another year among the NOLA blogpocheh, a bunch of yahoos who haven't gotten the message that "hope" is supposed to be a four-letter-word in the dirty sense. Though I will be bringing in the new year up north, I'll be back for more in 2008. Be well.


*from Frederick Taylor's The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989
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And, for those of you who instantly said Aw Hell Naw on seeing some more quotes from yet another book I've read - tough toenails. I read a lot. Get used to it. And just to torture you some more, here's another bunch of quotes from the past year. Read 'em and weep - with laughter.

The horrible news of Benazir Bhutto's assassination today had me thinking of one thing...

Daniel Pearl's murder. And, more specifically, the book Bernard Henri-Levy wrote investigating his murder. In it, he explores the fact that Pearl was killed for finding that Omar Sheikh, the man he was investigating, had connections with both the ISI (Pakistan's Secret Service) and al-Qaeda. Sheikh masterminded Pearl's killing and eventually admitted his guilt in court, but his connections to both organizations were never fully explored.

Levy's book can be tough to read at times, but what struck me about the things he related about the many factions present in Pakistani society is that, in invading Afghanistan and partnering with Pakistan, the U.S. was delaying dealing with a hornet's nest. Levy saw, back in 2002-3, that America's military might was not going to be directed against the Afghani neighbor that was most likely harboring former Taliban leaders - it would be turned towards countries a little further west. Like, say, Iran or Iraq.

For more on why Iran or Iraq, head to Maitri's.

We are absolutely not justified in saying we didn't see this coming. Most folks around the blogosphere are seeing a potential powder keg of Asia exploding here. For all our sakes, I hope not.

All right, I guess I got the order wrong.

First to go will be the housing, then the schools.

How do I know this?:

The 20-year-old man implicated in a bizarre October armed robbery -- and subsequent flight to then-District Attorney Eddie Jordan's house -- was accidentally released last week from Orleans Parish prison and remains at large, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Elton Phillips, the suspect in an Algiers gas station stick-up and a bit player in a circus-like drama involving Jordan, was also named a suspect in the fatal shooting of a New Orleans police officer. Two other men were later arrested in that killing, and Phillips has not been charged in that case, but police have not publicly cleared Phillips....

...The reason for his release stems from either a clerical error or a misreading of a screening document from the district attorney's office. Late Wednesday, officials from the DA and the Sheriff's Office pointed fingers at one another for the improper release.

The document, a screening action form submitted to Gusman's office by the district attorney's office -- dictates the jailer's action on all prisoners. Options on the paperwork indicate whether the case was accepted, refused, diverted or referred.

At the top of the paperwork, a prosecutor circled the "referred" option, which a representative of the DA said proved his office ordered Phillips kept behind bars.

All I want right now for the coming new year is competent law enforcement, prosecution, and prison management in this city. Complete with an office staff that can read and ask questions if they aren't sure about the documentation that they are given.

Duh.

Update, 12-27: I guess if this does happen again, we can get the St Charles Parish deputies to book 'em.

It's supposed to be a family time, the holidays. In the spirit of those heartwarming get-togethers, I bring you:

Relative Quotes

Searching for some New Year's gifts in a local bookstore, I was intrigued by a book about the nature of friendship and immediately thought of my mother's reaction to a recent bridal shower she'd attended. My mom is not a cold person by any stretch of the imagination, but friendships, for her, have been tossed and turned a great deal by the fact that the only constant in life is change. She took in the girl-to-woman proceedings and casual cute initiation rites with some bemusement, commenting later on that, "Granted, I haven't held on to the friendships I've had with childhood friends, but I didn't know I was gonna be joining the Ya-Ya Sisterhood when I came for the brunch."

Such is life, sometimes.

Life can also occasionally consist of trying to encompass a large, complicated part of it into one easily understood truism. My husband, statistician that he is, tried to encompass all of Christianity in this way on the 24th: "90% of it is saying kaddish for Jesus, and the remaining 10% is wishing he'd come back." Yeah, honey, tell that to all the folks who are commemorating the day of Christ's birth. If religion and its mysteries were that easy to quantify, we'd all be of one religious denomination.

There also wouldn't be as many wonderful movies such as Lilies of the Field, which we watched last night. Watching the nuns work their guilt trips on Sidney Poitier's character, Homer Smith, was a kick, and it was a movie that even the little guy wanted to watch. It soon became yet another lesson in "watch what you say around the child", as the little guy watched Homer finishing up the chapel and writing his name in the cement holding the crucifix atop the small tower next to the chapel. "He wrote his name up there, Mom?" the kid asked.

"Yes, he did, honey," I said to him.

"Is that a lower-case T up there, Mom?"

"I think so," I said, thinking he was talking about the "T" in Homer Smith's name. Then I stopped and thought about it. That "T" in the cement wasn't lower-case...

"Is that a lower-case T up there?" the little guy asked again. And then I understood.

On passing the large crosses off of I-10 in Baton Rouge one time, Dan referred to them as being "lower-case Ts"...which is what they are shaped like.

I was torn between laughing my head off and tearing Dan's head off for not watching what he says. Instead, all I could say was,

"Uhhh, yes it is, honey."

Anybody got a good starter course on world religions for five-year-olds?

I think I'm gonna need it.
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Oh!!!!...Mominem has a good shout-out to all the volunteers from Christian organizations giving their all to helping rebuild New Orleans. On Christmas Day at our synagogue, we met a couple of Jewish groups taking time out at our Chinese food and Bingo dinner from doing the same.

Bless them all...the ones who have come and the ones yet to come.

Ahh, the perils, the jumping to conclusions, the misinterpretations, the misunderstandings...

I'm speaking, of course, about five-year-old-speak. The kind of talk from kids on the verge of kindergarten that can sound like one thing when it really means something entirely innocuous and innocent.

"Mom, I saw a cont!" the little guy said earlier today.

"Excuse me?????!!!!?!????!!!!!" I said, ready for miffed parent educational lecture mode. Because I didn't hear "cont". I heard something entirely different. You know, the rude, crude, and socially unacceptable term for a part of the female anatomy that comes to mind when you drop the "o" and replace it with a "u".

"You know, Mom. The first part of the word on the airplane!" the little guy said, happy with his reading epiphany.

Oooo-kay. My jets cooled. The panic button was depressed a second time, shutting off the adrenaline. He was talking about one of his toy airplanes he'd received from his secret Santa at school. A Continental 737-800."Let me know if you see anything else that starts with 'cont', okay, Mom?" the kid said in his most admonitory, administrative tone. And of course he would ask me this, because he had this revelation about the letters of the alphabet where? Where else?

In the car, of course. In which we could pass by any number of signs that would start with those four letters. Not that we did.

If I ever end up with high-risk insurance rates to pay, it will be because I let the parental discipline adrenaline run away with me while I was driving the car. Pray for us, y'all.

Some holiday-related thoughts emanating from my family in the past few weeks:

The little guy revealed some clues as to his sense of self and how he relates to the world last week. His teacher told me that he was in the midst of stitching up some holiday stockings, and he insisted that they be Jewish stockings, because he is Jewish. Fair enough.

"And do you know why I'm Jewish?" the kid asked his teacher.
"Well, why are you Jewish?"
"Because I'm from New York! And everybody from New York is Jewish!!!" my son said triumphantly.

Trying very hard to suppress giggles leading to outright laughter, my son's teacher said, "But I'm from New York, and I'm not Jewish!!"

That one froze his brain for a bit. It just didn't fit his paradigm.

"I'm gonna let you think about that one for a bit, son. I'll be right over there," my son's teacher said in true Montessori fashion.

Needless to say, my extended family is having a field day with that one. Then again, what did we expect? The short time we lived in Queens, our social life revolved around our local synagogue and trips into Manhattan for rehearsals with our Yiddish chorus.

Last night, though, what was supposed to be a simple fielding of a Christmas question from the little guy turned into a short lecture from Dan on what kids really think of Santa Claus these days.

"Mom, why do we hate Santa Claus?" the little guy asked me as we came out of the synagogue last night.

"Honey, we don't hate him," I tried to say as seriously as I could, but failed. "We just don't believe in him, is all."

That seemed to satisfy the little guy. The mistake I made was when we got home and I mentioned the kid's query to my husband. "Actually, Santa these days is scary to a lot of kids!" he said, half-jokingly.

"Oh, no," I said. "Don't go there. Not here, not now."

"No, really. We were talking about this at work! A big guy in a beard breaks into everybody's house and wreaks holiday havoc in the world's homes in the form of leaving presents for the kids, causing them to go absolutely berserk! Santa is a stranger! Kids aren't supposed to talk to them, remember? Santa is nothing but a benevolent bully!" Dan finishes with a grin, as my son listens in on this diatribe, eyes wide and ears open.

Lovely. Let's just play some "Back Door Santa" for the kid and reinforce the picture of Saint Nick as embodying all the things parents have told their children to be wary of all these years.

Yeah, there are times when your typical five-year-old (in ten words or fewer) pays little attention to these things. But that brain belonging to the little guy has just duly noted that information, especially since it came from Daddy.

God help us, every one!

For what went on inside the City Council chambers, check the New Orleans News Ladder:

I HAVE A WORD TO SAY ABOUT THE CITY COUNCIL'S HANDLING OF THIS HEARING.
At the end, each council member read a lengthy explanation of his or her vote, and it became clear that they had prepared these statements together prior to the hearing. To me, that meant that the meeting was not a hearing at all, so a lot of very busy people had just wasted their time preparing their own three-minute speeches. The deal had already been done, and we were just spinning wheels, no doubt to the considerable amusement of the council members, the mayor, and the federal authorities. I judge the council members harshly for this deception. Furthermore, they had the outrageous audacity to correct the public for noise while they were speaking, yet they laughed and joked while the public was speaking. In fact, one man stopped his comments and demanded their attention before proceeding. It was a mockery of democratic procedures, and for that reason I found myself sympathizing with the outrage of the demonstrators. I also felt outraged, though I do not like to demonstrate in the manner they did. I left the meeting with the conviction that George Bush and his clique had their vision of what they wanted to look like, so they told Alphonso Jackson, who extorted obedience from the council. I do not know what the council would have decided, if the members had in fact been free to vote their own judgments. I have a copy of the threatening letter that Alphonso Jackson wrote to the mayor and the council.

I have a copy of that letter, too. It ain't Tony Soprano speaking, but it does remind city officials that the vouchers of former Lafitte tenants will be terminated at the end of this month if they don't go through with demolition, among other things. The almighty HUD had certainly spoken.

Oyster, that conscientious landlord, also gives us the questioning that should have been taken up by da local paper with regards to available low-income housing in New Orleans. The arguments he presents also expose how much of the anti-demo activists' actions were spurred on by reaction more than actual organized resistance, because there ain't no rest for the wicked, but if you are righteous, you, too, need to throw that rest away when you are in pursuit:

HUD says 154 units are available, and the T-P editorial board says "the city doesn't seem to have the severe shortage of public housing that demolition opponents say exists." Well, if a reporter is willing to follow an elderly public housing activist back to her home for an inspection, why can't T-P reporters do similar legwork to verify HUD's claims about available units?

In October, Senator Vitter said 400 units were available "right now". Then the T-P reported as "fact" that "hundreds" of units were available "right now". Days later, the number of available units "right now" was down to 154. Does even that number hold water, especially in light of DNOPH's claim that last year HUD acknowledged that the "250 prepared units...never existed"? Neither the T-P nor the activists were willing to find out for sure.

Why didn't activists press hard on this dubious, evolving HUD number upon which the T-P based so much of its reporting and editorial opinion? Wasn't this a politically exploitable "soft spot"? If the T-P was forced to retract its false subheading about the "fact" that "hundreds" of units were available "right now", and if HUD was shown to be lying about the 154 unit number-- a distinct possibility in my view-- wouldn't the activists be in a very strong position to demand a second opinion on, say, HUD's rehab vs. redevelop cost numbers? Couldn't any HUD number be credibly disputed at that point? What if the activists presented 154 displaced families who were willing to fill up the available units, and what if HUD was unable to come up with the 154 units that they claimed? How would that look? How would the T-P look? Wouldn't that be a political winner?

It's just too damn bad this is hindsight. It should have been seen by all of us all along, in much greater detail.

I'm gonna crawl back into bed now.