Dancing Queens

This week, I have the honor and downright pleasure of hosting The Cotillion Ball. My fellow lovely and gracious hostesses are Townhall's Mary Katherine Ham, TFS Magnum and e-Claire. All of our hostessing posts can be found at our mother ship website.

Let's get movin... This week, rather than simply posting according to alphabetical order, I'm going to post by related subject. As we've seen the terrible effects of natural disaster and remembered the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil all in one week, many of our amazing bloggers have fitting tributes, searing stabs and appropriate indictments on the two topics. We'll start with those related to September 11 and move to Katrina thereafter. Enjoy.

Holly at Soldiers' Angel is rallying some much needed attention toward the Flight 93 Memorial. She delivers an idea for a Katrina Memorial in the spirit of the aforementioned 9/11 Memorial. It's design bears a striking resemblance to the perpetrator, but it's purely by coincidence, of course, as is the gargantuan crescent in homage to those murdered by Islamic fascists. Serendipity is a funny thing, no?

Jody at Steal The Bandwagon tells, in lovely simplicity, of her Day of Rememberance. A very fitting, unpretentious post, if I do say so myself. :)

E.M. Zanotti over at The American Princess describes the thoughts, the consequences and what the future may hold for those 20 somethings who have inherited the aftermath of 9/11.

It was at that moment many of us chose sides, at that moment that many of us saw our futures flash before us, knew that as Americans, as young Americans, we were to inherit a very different world after 9:00 am than the world that existed at 7:30. We were at war, we had an enemy. We had something that we needed to do, a country that needed us, a world that was changing faster than the style of jeans, or the hot band. At that moment we chose what we would do with our lives, what our generation would be about.

Beth at Yeah, Right, Whatever reminds us of the ideology that sent two planes into the Twin Towers, one to the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania. The day may be four years behind us but the danger is still very real.

Onto Hurricane Katrina...

Deb over at TFS Magnum, my fellow hostess, rants that in a declared "state of emergency," constitutional rights seem to get chucked out the window. She reports that reporters have had cameras and other equipment confiscated by the police because of the footage they shot. 

Photojournalists Covering Katrina Fall Victim To Growing Violence, Chaos This is a continuation of the End of Freedom in America. In tactics that are reminiscent of the Soviet Union, police are confiscating cameras and memory cards when photographers are getting footage of them in the act of confronting looters.

The Amazing Anchoress assures that her post entitled "Both Parties Entwined in Mediocrity" is bound to get all parties' panties entwined in a bunch, so to speak.

One of the revelations of Hurricane Katrina is that local, state and federal politics have gone from maintaining a passing acquaintance with mediocrity, in the form of unqualified people in some jobs and the misplaced expenditures of some public monies, to a full-bodied embrace of mediocrity as the norm, rather than the necessary exception. Mediocrity is becoming the many-tentacled beast that is subduing the drive and sapping the energy of our leadership and the populace in general.

It is an excellent article that puts an end to finger pointing, or rather points out that one doesn't have enough fingers to point in this situation. It's an end to the Scapegoatism Syndrome running rampant in this catastrophe, expounded on by Cassandra at Villainous Company.

It's a proven scientific fact. As our good friends at the Institute have ably demonstrated, when Things Go Wrong, the people must have a scapegoat. And not just any old Tom, Dick, or Harry will do, mind you. After all, the Bush Dynasty has a long history of causing problems in this country. As various Democratic pundits have noted, there is a near-perfect correlation between Bush-related social indicia like Crime, Poverty, Racism, Political Incorrectness, Injustice and Kitten-bouncing and the myriad social problems caused by George W. Bush.

...and that's only her intro! It's a must read.

Mary Katherine Ham, also fellow lovely hostess of the Townhall C-Log, addresses the absurd concern that evacuees and victims of Katrina might in fact be....the horror...told about Jesus as they're given food, clothes and shelter by Christian charities. Could there be anything worse? Imagine where we'd be without the charity of churches and Christian individuals, especially women like Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. We sure as heck wouldn't have the Red Cross. Whiners should not be welcome in times like these. Which means the ACLU should be exiled. :)

Fausta, over at the Bad Hair Blog, brings some much need relief from all the bad news surrounding Katrina to give us not one, not two, but three posts reporting good things coming from an otherwise only bad situation. This pick me up is well worth the read.

Finally, Denita of Who Tends the Fires ends our ball with random musings that you are sure to enjoy.

Have a ball ladies! Click away!

Cross-posted at Cotillion.