Shut the Fuck Up.Yeah,I said it.Sit Down,Shut Up,and for once in your meaningless little spoiled ass life listen.
No one"wants"to be poor you morons.You talk like you've lived poor.Like you've had to struggle to survive and make ends meet.Like you know what it's like not to eat so your kids can.No you don't.
You talk like you've been poor,and therefore deem yourselves experts.No you aren't.
You seem to be living in a very sheltered world,so I'll try to keep this simple.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold -- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company -- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.
"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."
[. . .]
Symbolic of the importance the Bush Administration places on women's health, a male veterinarian has been appointed by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Lester Crawford as acting director of the Office of Women's Health. Norris E. Alderson, PhD, has spent the majority of his career at the FDA holding various positions in the Center for Veterinary Medicine. [my em]
[. . .]
Preznit Their Blood His Gutz
Preznit Kissin' Condi
Preznit Rexall Wrangler
Preznit Economic Disaster
Preznit Dangerous Pretzel
Preznit Illiterate
Preznit Yellow Stripe
Preznit Turd Smoker
Preznit Buggered and Beholden
[. . .]
"If everyone in your town feels the same way. Just act like they aren't there. Act like they're invisible. Everybody. Do it long enough and the nature of the attention starved negro will come out in such ways to deserve arrest, but none will be able to blame Whitey."
"Yea man, I know how you feel. The little town that I live in which is in Utah is 98% white at least, and now we have these blacks being moved here . Im not saying all of them, but the majority of them are low life druggie criminals who live off of welfare. I would also like to know what to do."
"So far none here in north Indiana, coons don't like the cold. I'm buying some guns to prepare myself for them, I'm sure some will make it up here."
"115 due to land in Tucson this morning! Time to print out my listing of the dangers these negroes will face in this area of the Sonoran Desert and infiltrate the leaflets in their Welcome Wagon handouts."
"Unless these niggers get krystaaal and fried chicken, they will start rioting and raping whites. If they do get their demands, they will still rape and kill, just not riot as much."
"Believe it or not, we called the local Klan about 2 weeks ago, and they actually admitted that they don't do anything anymore, because they are broke...."
[. . .]
Leo Bosner, an emergency management specialist at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., is in charge of the unit that alerts officials of impending crises and manages the response. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner knew that Katrina could turn into a major emergency.
In daily e-mails -- known as National Situation Updates -- sent to Chertoff, Brown and others in the days before Katrina made landfall in the Gulf Coast, Bosner warned of its growing strength -- and of the particular danger the hurricane posed to New Orleans, much of which lies below sea level.
But Bosner says FEMA failed to organize the massive mobilization of National Guard troops and evacuation buses needed for a quick and effective relief response when Katrina struck. He says he and his colleagues at FEMA's D.C. headquarters were shocked by the lack of response. [my emphases]
[. . .]
[. . .]
It is impossible to over-emphasize the extent to which this area is under government occupation, and portions of it under government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets. They (along with Humvees, ambulances, fire apparatus, FEMA trucks and all official-looking SUVs) are generally not stopped at checkpoints and roadblocks. All other vehicles are subject to long lines and snap judgments and must PROVE they have vital business inside the vast roped-off regions here. If we did not have the services of an off-duty law enforcement officer, we could not do our jobs in the course of a work day and get back in time to put together the broadcast and get on the air. As we are about to do. [my emphasis]
Just in case people didn't realize it, last night's flood of pretty lights in Jackson Square that served as a etheral backdrop during Bush's speech were only temporary. About an hour after Bush left town, so did all the electricity.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Mr. President, your legacy is set in stone, finished. You might as well go on another vacation -- your self-portrait is as good as shredded. Your word isn't worth dog paddies anymore. It doesn't matter if you ride out the rest of your second term indictment-free -- your reputation is irremediably shot.
[. . .]
NEW YORK (AP) -- International Business Machines Corp., worried the United States is losing its competitive edge, will financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers.
[. . .]
[. . .]
He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
"The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario," Fedchun said.
[. . .]
The brazenness of the Republican PR machine is almost impossible to describe.
After years passing out pork and presiding over the highest deficits in American history, for example, Tom Delay has just declared victory in the budget wars -- claiming that the Republicans have finally cut out all the fat.
So now Karl Rove will be free to throw as much money at the Gulf Coast as he wants to, in order to advance the Republican campign operation he's headed for so long. [my emphasis]
[. . .]
. . . As I have written before, the longer the insulated D.C. Democratic Establishment practices its trademark thumb-in-the-wind, split-the-difference politics on the most important national security issues, the more the public will perceive the Democrats as standing for nothing. . .
How's this sentence for grabbing your attention? "Some radiological waste storage areas may lack adequate protection against sabotage which could cause wide-area radiological dispersal." That's from a retired Admiral's independent report on the security capability of the Department of Energy, another crony-laden organ of the Bush Administration. [my em]
[. . .]
[. . .]
I would genuinely like to know the answers to these questions because I am trying to think of a way in which this doesn't mean that Louisiana and Mississippi will be a giant dead zone and I'm not coming up with one:New government tests show dangerous amounts of sewage-related bacteria and lead from unknown sources in the floodwaters in New Orleans, and high levels of chemicals such as hexavalent chromium, used in industrial plating, and arsenic, used in treating wood.
. . .
[. . .]
HOUSTON - On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."
(New York - AP, Sept. 14, 2005) - The second-place finisher conceded the Democratic mayoral primary to Fernando Ferrer on Wednesday, sparing the party the threat of a divisive runoff in its uphill quest to unseat Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
With absentee ballots still outstanding after Tuesday's primary, Ferrer was just fractions of a percentage point shy of the 40 percent he needed to avoid a runoff with Rep. Anthony Weiner, who had 29 percent. Elections officials had said it might take several days to count all the votes.
[. . .]
I'm sorry, but this finding the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional is just plain silly. I suppose in the strictest construction of an interpretation of the First Amendment it probably rises to some level of violating the Establishment clause, but sheesh... There are just some fights not worth picking and this is one of them.
Aside from the fact that it hands the Religious Reich a couple of million dollars in fund-raising, it trivializes the real abuses of the First Amendment like the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act.
This is a no-win fight. Even if the complainant prevails, all it will do is piss off a bunch of people who are spoiling for a fight, as if they need another excuse to raise more money to rally for a theocratic state.
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.
The New York Democrat's bid to establish the panel - which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government's disaster response apparatus - failed to win the two-thirds majority vote needed to overcome procedural hurdles.
[. . .]
Charities are for Suckers
By Ted Rall Tue Sep 13, 8:06 PM ET
Leave Katrina Relief Efforts to Government
NEW YORK--Hurricane Katrina has prompted Americans to donate more than $700 million to charity, reports the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So many suckers, so little foresight.
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.
The American Red Cross leads the post-Katrina sweepstakes, quickly closing in on the $534 million it took in just after 9/11. But Red Cross spokeswoman Sheila Graham told the AP it needs another half billion "to provide emergency relief over the coming weeks for thousands of evacuees who have scattered among 675 of its shelters in 23 states."
Shelley Borysiewicz of Catholic Charities USA, which has raised $7 million thus far, also continues to solicit donations: "We don't want people to lose sight of the fact that this is going to take years of recovery, and we're going to be there to help the people who fall through the cracks."
What "cracks"? Why should New Orleans' dispossessed have to live in private shelters? We live in the United States, not Mali. There's only one reason flood victims aren't getting help from the government: because the government refuses to help them. The Red Cross and its cohorts are letting lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and so are their donors.
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.
For our leaders the optional war against Iraq is such a priority, which the Congressional Budget Office expects to cost $600 billion by 2010. That's four or five Katrinas right there. (That's also where the levee money went.) Because rich people are always a political priority, their taxes have been slashed by $4 trillion over a decade--the equivalent of 32 Katrinas. So worried are our public servants about the tax burden placed on the rich that they're looking out for rich dead people. This is why they've gutted the estate tax that, at a cost of $75 billion annually, will run half a Katrina a year. Trickle-down economists beginning with Milton Friedman shout "starve the beast," but while the social programs are put on a diet, the mean and powerful pig out more than ever.
Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead (nine percent for the Red Cross) and their parochial, often religious, agendas. It's also way too expensive. In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they've managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognizing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion--over 70 times the amount raised by charities--to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico. As Bush says, that's only a "down payment."
Cutting a check to the Red Cross isn't just a vote for irresponsible government. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what you'll end up paying for Katrina in increased taxes.
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.
Starting next week, the New York Times' "influential" op-ed columnists will only be available online to those who subscribe to TimesSelect for a $49.95 annual fee. (They should combine forces with BSafe.com for a package deal -- "keep teen masturbators off your computer and Nick Kristof on your computer for only $99.90 a year.")
[. . .]
BAGHDAD, Iraq - At least 73 people were killed and 162 wounded early Wednesday when a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near a group of construction workers in a Shiite district in northern Baghdad, police said.
[. . .]
New Orleans is beginning to look like Funeralgate, supersized.
FEMA has relieved volunteers of their emergency mortuary services in Louisiana only, and contracted out to Kenyon, a "wholly-owned subsidiary of Service Corporation International" of Houston, Texas.
Are the alarms sounding yet? LightUpTheDarkness reminds us why they should be:
A German inventor says he's found a way to make cheap diesel fuel out of dead cats.
[. . .]
All of us know that our nation -- all of us, the United States of America -- failed the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast when this hurricane was approaching them, and when it struck. When the corpses of American citizens are floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a hurricane strikes, it is time not only to respond directly to the victims of the catastrophe but to hold the processes of our nation accountable, and the leaders of our nation accountable, for the failures that have taken place.
[. . .]
And of course in both cases the story is complex and many factors are involved, but I want you draw a line connecting the feelings that you had then and now. And I want you to draw another line, connecting those responsible for both of those unbelievable tragedies that embarrassed our nation in the eyes of the world. [my emphases]
[. . .]
[. . .]
"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.
[. . .]
"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.
[. . .]
For that, we have Denver to thank. Even though his face will forever be associated with Gilligan, whom the skipper blamed for every mishap on the island, I suspect he was more of a beatnik than a shipwrecked buffoon. If only today's television teenagers were less like Gilligan and more like Maynard. May Bob Denver, like, rest in peace.
[. . .]
There are many reasons why people in power live in denial and create dream worlds for themselves. But the personality characteristics George Bush is evincing are typical of people with untreated alcoholism, or as we in the club call it, being a "dry drunk." [my em]
[. . .]
[. . .]
Whether or not any of these people believe their own "bull" on this subject, their attempts to argue there exists a coherent left/liberal/Democratic movement, coordinated and institutionalized, that is constantly on the political attack in order to preserve a secular, internationalized, multi-culti America, have been shown by various writers, journalists (though fewer of those) and academics, to be pitifully lacking in evidence or credibility, despite the Herculean efforts of David Horowitz.
[. . .]
Junior just said that the American people need to understand that he can do more than one thing at a time and that the government and other individuals can do more than one things at a time.
[. . .]
"Although the waters have receded from New Orleans, it's still a huge, huge problem and will be for months to come. You see the fresh water is contaminated with oil and gas. Actually, from Dick Cheney's perspective, the oil and gas is contaminated with fresh water." -Jay Leno
"As you know, FEMA stands for 'Fix Everything My Ass.'" --Jay Leno
"By the way, if you want to help the victims hit hardest by hurricane Katrina, Fox news has posted the Web site of the Republican National Committee." --Bill Maher
"But hey, it is New Orleans. Watching today, I could tell that this city has not lost its hope. It has not lost its distinctive pluck, because every time rescue teams would toss supplies to people, women flashed their tits." --Bill Maher
[. . .]
The electrical situation deteriorated this summer in Baghdad. We've gone from a solid 8 - 10 hours daily to around six. During the winter, we have generators in the area providing electricity when it goes off. In the summer, however, with the heat and the heavy electrical load from air-conditioners AND the fuel shortage, many generators have to be turned off for most of the day.
We're also having water difficulties, though people have grown accustomed to that. You can tell first thing in the morning that the water is cut off. I woke up this morning and knew it even before I had gotten out of bed. The house just sounds . . . dry. You strain your ears for the familiar house sounds and they aren't there- there's no drip-drip-drip from the faucet in the bathroom down the hall. There's no sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen downstairs. There's no sound of a toilet being flushed, and certainly no sound of a shower. The house is dry.
The dryness and heat are a stark contrast to the images we see on television of Mississippi and Louisiana. Daily, we watch the havoc Katrina left in its wake and try to determine which are more difficult to bear- man-made catastrophes like wars and occupations, or natural disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.
[. . .]
What's also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists, and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance - their loathing of other people's beliefs, of America's secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge - has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power. They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers as ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ (the "Christograph") on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners of his legions and routed his rivals in Rome. Never mind that the Emperor himself was never baptized into the faith; it served him well enough to make the God worshipped by Christians his most important ally and turn the Sign of Christ into the one imperial symbol most widely recognized and feared from east to west.
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
NEW ORLEANS - Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing AfricanAmericans "looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses." "I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I'd managed to find," said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. "Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers." Radio stations still in operation are advising store owners and white people in the affected areas to locate firearms in sporting-goods stores in order to protect themselves against marauding blacks looting gun shops.
Oh really? The Bushes have always made fun of Bill Clinton's lip-biting, hands-on governing, but who wouldn't prefer it to this president's upbeat platitudes. Tanned and rested from a vacation so long it would embarrass the French, Bush initially flew over the devastation in Air Force One, promising his prayers on his way someplace else. When he actually arrived in Louisiana a few days later, he reminisced about going to New Orleans "to enjoy myself, occasionally too much," apparently thinking he was at a fundraiser. He topped that in Mississippi: "Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house ... there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."
Even to his detractors, the callous, puerile attitude and sheer ineptitude of Bush this past week is shocking. He got off to a slow start on 9/11 but quickly found his bullhorn and Rudy Giuliani. He's got neither here.
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have - replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf.
The worrisome question is how much like them are the rest of us? In 2000, even his supporters found Al Gore and his 10-point plans long-winded compared with the affable frat boy rescued from a checkered career by family and connections until he was running the Texas Rangers and then Texas itself. For three years, we watched as Bush created and compounded the tragedy in Iraq, and rehired him anyway. Perhaps now we see that you better treat government with respect. You never know when your life - political and otherwise - might depend on it.
[. . .]
But all of a sudden we've hit this sort of weird peak. People have been getting bombarded for so long with the concept of performance; corporate performace (work harder!), personal performance (home/life/relationships), familial performance (soccer mom/dad), school (right one/SAT/Med/Law) and it goes on and on. We all go to work and have meet performance expectations, sometimes monthly or half-yearly or certainly yearly. But strangely no one does seem to apply these standards to politicians. Elections occur, and they don't get judged on anything but their ability to perform like trained seals at fundraisers: perform well, get enough cash-stuffed fish to run a campaign until you have so much electoral momentum cycle-to-cycle that it's not even a chore anymore, no one runs against you. Performance is only due for the corporate masters who toss the fish, and sometimes their orders are "do nothing".
[. . .]
Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.Read the whole article. It will make you wring your hands and wish for what should have been.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.
Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor's biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats.
"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities," Miller said.
"President Bush should immediately realize the colossal mistake he has made in signing this order and rescind it and ensure that America puts its people back to work in the wake of Katrina at wages that will get them and their families back on their feet," Miller said.
WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being relieved of his command of the Bush administration's Hurricane Katrina onsite relief efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Friday.
He will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts, Chertoff said.
Earlier, Brown confirmed the switch. Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a federal relief effort that has drawn widespread and sharp criticism, Brown told The Associated Press after a long pause: "By the press, yes. By the president, No."
A Texas grand jury has indicted a political action committee formed by US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as well as a powerful business group on charges they violated the state's campaign finance laws, officials said on Thursday.
Earle has said DeLay is under investigation and a spokesman for him said on Thursday the investigation into illegal campaign finances continues.
As Republicans desperately cry out of one corner of their mouths to stop the blame game, they have been blaming everyone but themselves since this catastrophe. Let's look at their ever-evolving buck-passing strategies.
[. . .]
Blame the Victims: Both FEMA's Michael Brown and Homeland Security's Michael Chertoff, the Mutt and Jeff of this calamity, have blamed careless, destitute New Orleaners for not evacuating. "Those who got out are fine," Chertoff told NBC's Tim Russert. FEMA sought to excuse its delays in entering the city by blaming the looters.
Blame the Locals: In a stroke of political luck, both the New Orleans mayor and Louisiana's Governor are Democrats. As the New York Times reported, Karl Rove's PR strategy is to shift the blame to the state and city officials. All Sunday, White House officials and Fox News played this card. Expect more of this line of attack.
Blame the City: In perhaps the most bizarre excuse, Chertoff pointed the finger the city of New Orleans itself, saying, "It is a soup bowl. People have talked for years about whether it makes sense to have a city like that."
[. . .]
Downing Street Memos: Action Item
Remember those?
The resolution of inquiry (H. Res 375) introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) now has 65 co-sponsors, and will come to a vote in the House International Relations Committee on September 14th, where it has the co-sponsorship of most of the Democrats and one Republican.
If passed, it will require the White House and the State Department to "transmit all information relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom between January 1, 2002, and October 16, 2002, relating to the policy of the United States with respect to Iraq." To pass, it needs all the Democrats and three Republicans. The more Congress Members not on the committee who co-sponsor, the more likely some committee members are to vote yes.
So . . .
Email Your Congress Member
Phone and Fax Your Congress Member
Or call the switchboard tollfree at (888) 818-6641
More info here.
Also, don't forget about the Sept 15 and Sept 24 rallies. (Patrick at Yelladog has some thoughts (and clarifications) on the rallies to check out, too.) ~Shakespeare's Sister
Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling
The rebellion of the talking heads reached its culmination today as CNN.com contrasted "the official version" of events in New Orleans with its "in-the-trenches" account by its reporters and authoritative sources. Muted compared to the on-air growling, the Web story still portrays the government as a pack of liars, or worse, as bumbling idiots. The broadcasters' angry dispatches break with the "public face" they usually give their work: polite, patient, neutral, generous. A steady diet of such confrontational reporting would probably be as edifying as a Jerry Springer show. But when the going gets this tough - when government incompetence and lies become so insurmountable - sometimes the only way to get the story is by getting mad.
Forgive some of us for not celebrating the press's coming-out party. The fact that this kind of aggressive questioning of people in power during times of crisis now passes as news itself only highlights just how timid the mainstream press corps has been during the Bush years.
It's hard to decide which is more troubling: that it took the national press corps five years to summon up enough courage to report, without apology, that what the Bush administration says and does are often two different things, or that it took the sight of bodies floating facedown in the streets of New Orleans to trigger a change in the press's behavior.
For years, frustrated news consumers have wondered what it would take to finally awaken the press from its perpetual, lazy slumber. Now we know the answer: one ravaged American city and a few thousand dead civilians.
Laden with humanitarian aid for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a Mexican military unit crossed into U.S. territory today.
Carrying nearly 200 unarmed soldiers, doctors, nurses and engineers, the convoy of dozens of trucks entered Texas at Laredo this morning with mobile kitchens, water treatment plants, bottled water, blankets and canned food for people displaced by Katrina.
Some Mexican commentators have pointed out the irony of Mexico sending troops to territory it once owned. But Mexican officials have played down that angle.
Mexico also has sent a naval vessel laden with boats and other equipment to the mouth of the Mississippi River near Biloxi, Miss.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that the disastrous delay in providing aid to the city's beleaguered citizens was in large part a matter of waiting until this massive military force was ready to deploy.
While no doubt incompetence and indifference played a major role, there is also strong evidence that aid was deliberately withheld by the White House and the Pentagon as part of a strategy for asserting unfettered military control over the city.
Both hurricane victims and public officials have given multiple accounts of US authorities actively turning back aid and blocking rescue attempts in the days that followed the breaching of the city's levees.
Finally, he said that just a day earlier FEMA agents had come in and "cut all of our emergency communication lines" without any warning. The local sheriff, he added, had the lines reconnected and then posted armed guards to see that they were not cut again.
This last, and most sinister, example is in keeping with the Pentagon's "information war" doctrine, which demands the complete control of communications in an area targeted for invasion and occupation.
In reality the US ruling elite and both major parties have used September 11 as the pretext for implementing far-reaching attacks on democratic rights and breaching legal barriers - such as Posse Comitatus - against the use of military force against the American people.
Just last month, the Washington Post published an article revealing that US military's Northern Command had developed a series of "war plans" for the military "to take charge" in domestic crises. (See: "Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US".)
While apparently these plans involved a response to supposed terrorist attacks, including the detonation of a nuclear device in a major American city, the catastrophe that struck New Orleans provided ideal conditions for testing the plans out.
The deliberate denial of food, water and means of escape to tens of thousands of suffering New Orleanians in order to prepare a massive military exercise is a crime. It is moreover a warning that the deepening of the social crisis in America raises the threat of military repression and dictatorship.
I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp
I'm extremely depressed to report that things seem to only be getting sadder concerning the people so devastatingly affected by Katrina last week. Two car loads of us headed over to Falls Creek, a youth camp for Southern Baptist churches in Oklahoma that agreed to have its facilities used to house Louisiana refugees. I'm afraid the camp is not going to be used as the kind people of the churches who own the cabins believe it was going to be used. .....
FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook. In fact, the "host" goes on to explain, some churches had already enquired about whether they could come in on weekends and fix meals for the people staying in their cabin. FEMA won't allow it because there could be a situation where one cabin gets steaks and another gets hot dogs - and...
it could cause a riot.
It gets worse.
He then precedes to tell us that some churches had already enquired into whether they could send a van or bus on Sundays to pick up any occupants of their cabins who might be interested in attending church. FEMA will not allow this. The occupants of the camp cannot leave the camp for any reason. If they leave the camp they may never return. They will be issued FEMA identification cards and "a sum of money" and they will remain within the camp for the next 5 months.
My son looks at me and mumbles "Welcome to Krakow."
My mother then asked if the churches would be allowed to come to their cabin and conduct services if the occupants wanted to attend. The response was "No ma'am. You don't understand. Your church no longer owns this building. This building is now owned by FEMA and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. They have it for the next 5 months." This scares my mother who asks "Do you mean they have leased it?" The man replies, "Yes, ma'am...lock, stock and barrel. They have taken over everything that pertains to this facility for the next 5 months."
September 7, 2005 Last Night
Sometime around midnight, a squad of 82nd Airborne guys accompanied by a US Marshall busted into our Data Center with their M4-A1s to investigate the lights and movement. Personally, I know they were just bored -- there's no way they honestly thought there was some kind of threat up here just yards away from several huge military and police presences. Anyway, they came up and demanded to account for us all. That means they told Donny, who was still up, to come wake up Crys and me in the side closet room type area where we sleep. I could hear Donny telling them that I was exSpecial Forces as he came to get me. He stuck his head in and explained the situation while I made Crys get up and get dressed. We came out and I gave the Marshall a sheepish look which said was this really enough fun for to relieve your boredom? He kind of knew they shouldn't be up here -- I think it was Crystal's being here which really made him snap out of it. He began apologizing and I could tell the yound soldiers with him were really shy about having seen Crystal come out too.
But I didn't let them all off that easily. "Hey, I understand. I know you guys are just doing your job." He kept apologizing. Then I put them to work. "So wait, how did you get up here anyway? We locked this building down....
The Marshall claimed that one of the emergency exits -- the one on the Lafayette Square side had been open. I knew this was bullshit. For one thing, Sig and I tied down and concealed that door. It would have taken a group of guys to open it. For another Lafayette Square is to the south of our building. The only lights visisble are from Poydras to the north. Am I to believe that they bypassed the obvious entrances (also locked down) to look for one they didn't even know existed and it just happened to be open?
No, they searched for a way in, and by the time they got around back and found the emergency exit, they were ready to break in, so they did.
"Wait, we secured that exit. That means that this building might have other people in it," I told them.
They all knew what was coming next. If it was their job to check on lights and movement to look for people who didn't belong there....
I asked them to sweep the building for us.
And they did. All 27 floors of it with no elevators.
If you want to play soldier with me, I will make you play it a lot longer than you had in mind.
Crystal and I went back to bed secure in the knowledge that a US Marshall and a squad from the 82nd Airborne cleared 27 floors and the roof of our temporary residence. And then they secured the door they must have spent 45 minutes breaking into.
Most restful sleep I've had all week.
An interesting dynamic is taking shape in this city, not altogether positive: after days of rampant lawlessness (making for what I think most would agree was an impossible job for the New Orleans Police Department during those first few crucial days of rising water, pitch-black nights and looting of stores) the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous. At one fire scene, I counted law enforcement personnel (who I presume were on hand to guarantee the safety of the firefighters) from four separate jurisdictions, as far away as Connecticut and Illinois. And tempers are getting hot. While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.
At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.
The NYT:
In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.
The sight of corpses has become almost common on the mostly abandoned streets of New Orleans, as rescue and evacuation operations have taken priority over removing the dead.
Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.
Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.
That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
I don't believe for one minute in a petulant and vengeful Deity that murders people to score debating points. However, if I did actually put my faith in such childish superstitions, I think I would be be much less inclined to blame gays for every single bad thing that happens and pay very close attention to the fact that God is at His most wrathful when foolish men in great nations make monsters into kings.
[. . .]
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
[. . .]
PENSACOLA, Fla., Sept. 6 - Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety.
Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast.
[. . . ]
Flying over Biloxi and Gulfport and other areas of Mississippi, they could see rescue personnel on the ground, Lieutenant Udkow said, but he noticed that there were few rescue units around the flooded city of New Orleans, on the ground or in the air. "It was shocking," he said.
[. . .]
Lieutenant Udkow said that he saw few other rescue helicopters in New Orleans that day. The toughest part, he said, was seeing so many people imploring him to pick them up and having to leave some.
"I would be looking at a family of two on one roof and maybe a family of six on another roof, and I would have to make a decision who to rescue," he said. "It wasn't easy."
[. . .]
The order to halt civilian relief efforts angered some helicopter crews. Lieutenant Udkow, who associates say was especially vocal about voicing his disagreement to superiors, was taken out of the squadron's flying rotation temporarily and assigned to oversee a temporary kennel established at Pensacola to hold pets of service members evacuated from the hurricane-damaged areas, two members of the unit said. Lieutenant Udkow denied that he had complained and said he did not view the kennel assignment as punishment.
[. . .]
In protest, some members of the unit have stopped wearing a search and rescue patch on their sleeves that reads, "So Others May Live."
May God watch over you New Orleans. And please survive, so we can come back and help drink your economy back to health.
Which leads us to the second problem: For the ten thousand years of human civilization, we've relied on the planet's basic physical stability. Sure, there have been hurricanes and droughts and volcanoes and tsunamis, but averaged out across the Earth, it's been a remarkably stable run. If your grandparents inhabited a particular island, chances were that you could too. If you could grow corn in your field, you could pretty much count on your grandkids being able to do likewise. Those are now sucker's bets -- that's what those predictions about environmental refugees really mean.
Here's another way of saying it: In the last century, we've seen change in human societies speed up to an almost unimaginable level, one that has stressed every part of our civilization. In this century, we're going to see the natural world change at the same kind of rate. That's what happens when you increase the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere. That extra energy expresses itself in every way you can imagine: more wind, more evaporation, more rain, more melt, more... more... more.
Our rulers have insisted by both word and deed that the laws of physics and chemistry do not apply to us. That delusion will now start to vanish. Katrina marks Year One of our new calendar, the start of an age in which the physical world has flipped from sure and secure to volatile and unhinged. New Orleans doesn't look like the America we've lived in. But it very much resembles the planet we will inhabit the rest of our lives.
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) today exposed internal oil company memos that show how the industry intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits. The exposure comes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as the oil industry blames environmental regulation for limiting number of U.S. refineries.
The three internal memos from Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco (Click here to read the memos.) show different ways the oil giants closed down refining capacity and drove independent refiners out of business. The confidential memos demonstrate a nationwide effort by American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying and research arm of the oil industry, to encourage the major refiners to close their refineries in the mid-1990s in order to raise the price at the pump.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said the administration is "getting a bad rap" for the emergency response.
"This is the largest disaster in the history of the United States, over an area twice the size of Europe (my bold)," Stevens said. "People have to understand this is a big, big problem."
From MSNBC. Italics are mine.Interviews with evacuees in Houston, which is expecting many thousands of evacuees to remain, suggest that thousands of blacks who lost everything and had no insurance will end up living in Texas or other U.S. states.
LONDON - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that Iraq has become an even greater "center for terrorist activities" than Afghanistan under the Taliban.
Annan, speaking to British Broadcasting Corp., said many young Muslims are angry, and their anger has been exacerbated by what is happening in Iraq.
[. . .]
Predictably, the Bush message-meisters are launching a trademark hardball, all-politics-all-the-time campaign to rewrite the events of last week to so that the administration's worst week becomes someone else's fault, and someone else's problem.
Of course, if the media refuses to be supine to Rove's campaign, he can use the trustiest arrow in his quiver of dirty tricks - the old bromide of liberal media bias. Ascribing criticism in the media has worked reliably for the GOP for two decades because the myth has become gospel to millions of Americans.
But the media have a weapon on their side that they have been reluctant to use against the GOP barrage - and maybe they'll be motivated this time to bring this powerful force to bear. The weapon is the facts in the case. FEMA screwed up. The aid was demonstrably not forthcoming when it was needed. The buck stops at the top. Period.
A deafening silence haunts the American conservative echo chamber.
It has now been four days since the levees in New Orleans broke, and yet, not a word of comment on the disaster from either George Will or Robert Novak, the doyens of conservative opinion making here in the United States. Will's two op-eds since the day after Katrina have been, "The role of judges cuts both ways" and "Questions for Sen. Schumer" (Sep. 4), while Robert Novak wrote an obituary column about his friend Jude Wanniski ("Father of supply-side," Sept.1) and a column on the estate tax ("Estate tax politics," Sept. 3).
Something is terribly amiss.
Karl Rove had better hurry up and get those talking points out. Silence and desperate, feeble random spinning, he knows better than anyone else, have never worked as a PR strategy.
My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anything bad about him. My mother was wrong. History requires truth, not puffery or silence, especially about powerful governmental figures. And obituaries are a first draft of history. So here's the truth about Chief Justice Rehnquist you won't hear on Fox News or from politicians. Chief Justice William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power speaks volumes about the current state of American values.
Within moments of Rehnquist's death, Fox News called and asked for my comments, presumably aware that I was a longtime critic of the late Chief Justice. After making several of these points to Alan Colmes (who was supposed to be interviewing me), Sean Hannity intruded, and when he didn't like my answers, he cut me off and terminated the interview. Only after I was off the air and could not respond did the attack against me begin, which is typical of Hannity's bullying ambush style. He is afraid to attack when there's someone there to respond. Since the interview, I've received dozens of e-mail hate messages, some of which are overtly anti-Semitic. One writer called me "a jew prick that takes it in the a** from ruth ginzburg [sic]." Another said I am "an ignorant socialist left-wing political hack... You're like a little Heinrich Himmler! (even the resemblance is uncanny!)." Yet another informed me that I "personally make us all lament the defeat of the Nazis!" A more restrained viewer found me to be "a disgrace to the Law, to Harvard, and to humanity."
All this, for refusing to put a deceptive gloss on a man who made his career undermining the rights and liberties of American citizens.
Ben Morris, Slidell mayor: We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors. If they do so, they'd better be armed because I'll be damned if I'm going to let them deprive our citizens. I'm pissed off, and tired of this horse$#@@."
America, at its core, is a progressive nation. It is a nation focused on moving forward. Founded on the idea of escaping religious persecution, America has always been an ideal of progress and the relentless pursuit of that goal. We don't always get it right. Throughout our history the forces of evil - greed, prejudice, hate - have occasionally taken the reigns of power and exerted their darkness over our people. But because America is about progress, about reaching for the stars and trying again when you don't quite get there, these enemies of progress inevitably fail. They may appear to have the support of our people, but inevitably the good triumphs.
It is time for a new Progressive Era in America. Progressives understand what conservatives do not, that looking backwards, looking to some mythical image of 1950s era domesticity as the paragon of freedom is a fool's game. As such, progressives must now more than ever embrace the values of progressive culture wholeheartedly without delay. [my em]
[. . .]
