Quotable

"If God is just, I tremble for my country."
– Thomas Jefferson

Happy Thoughts

Poop Or Get Off The Pot

There we go. Increasingly, the Democratic Party is showing its ineffectiveness in the face of the events that are largely bigger than they are. Time to close up shop and start anew.

"Much of the Democrat's cognitive dissonance has to do with the success of Howard Dean at the DNC. He's been able to corral antiwar Democrats into the fold, making sure they don't flee en masse over the war issue even though they should. Many still see Dean as a sign of hope for a party leadership that stays in touch with the grassroots. Plus, Dean's early criticisms of the Iraq war earned him significant street cred with party advocates.

It was undeserved. Dean, like the rest of the Democratic leadership, is pro-war and pro-occupation, and it couldn't be more damaging for the peace movement to continue putting faith in this futile party. If Democratic activists really want to make some change, the best thing they could do would be to get up and leave their party. Only then will Democratic leaders start to think twice about the monstrous policies they endorse."

Top Democrats Flee Peace Protests

Wait a Minute...

... Wait just a minute. There were tax cuts in government funds for helping out the needy because we were told that faith based initiative was the better way to go than to use tax money to help those who are in need... And now we are using tax money to do just that...?!?!?!

These are the weirdest times we are living in.

"After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita."


FEMA Plans to Reimburse Faith Groups for Aid

Worth a Look Back...

Republicans for Fear

Quotable

"Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst. Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling."

Corinne Carey, researcher, U.S. Program, Human Rights Watch

New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters (Human Rights Watch, 22-9-2005)

Somewhere along the way, we have lost our Humanity...

The Only Corporation In America

"More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA."

Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions

Now here is what bothers me. Shouldn't these questions have been raised before the contracts were awarded? I mean, what use is it to lament over it now? The contracts are awarded. The money is flowing. It will be years before any sort of inquiry concludes anything of value... if ever such inquiry is even done. Meanwhile, the hogs are getting fat and should they need to spend a fraction of their profits for attorney's fees... so be it.

Day of Protest

"Thousands of protesters against the war in Iraq rallied today in Washington and other U.S. and European cities to demand the return of U.S. troops in what organizers hope will be the largest gathering since the war began more than two years ago.

Protest organizers estimated a crowd of about 200,000 rallied at the Ellipse, then marched around the White House and along Pennsylvania Avenue. Police downgraded the count to about 150,000."

Antiwar Protests Commence in Washington

He Don't

"This new clip by our friends at subMedia is an effort to keep the mantra going “George Bush Don’t Like Black People” by The Legendary K.O. Make sure you stick through the credits for a surprise ending."

NEW: George Bush Don't Like Black People

The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters

This lie was exposed long time ago when it became clear that most people killed or captured while fighting US in Iraq where in fact Iraqis, this Administration has continued to lie and to make believe that the insurgency are mostly foreign...

"The US and Iraqi governments have vastly overstated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq, and most of them don't come from Saudi Arabia, according to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). According to a piece in The Guardian, this means the US and Iraq 'feed the myth' that foreign fighters are the backbone of the insurgency. While the foreign fighters may stoke the insurgency flames, they only comprise only about 4 to 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgents."

The 'myth' of Iraq's foreign fighters

Septemeber 24, 2005

china II - Again

You may laugh at the prospect but I think more and more it is appropriate to change our name to China II. Why, with rigged elections, a ruling class, workers getting no protection whatsoever, the lap-dog media... I see more and more similarities than differences.

"The tactics the GOP perfected in Ohio 2004 are now being honed for re-use in 2008. Neither Al Gore nor John Kerry nor the core of the Democratic Party has been willing to face the reality that elections in the United States are all but over. This latest wimp report from the Carter-Baker whitewash commission does no better.

Unless our electoral system gets a total top-to-bottom revamp by an informed public willing to deal with the systematic poisoning of American democracy, there is no reason to bother printing the ballots or plugging in the voting machines in 2008. "

Election 2004

Take A Hint...

Subject: To George W., with love: Bill

Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any
more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all
of that. You can't start another war because you used
up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your
term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping
poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's
bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's
speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what you've always done best:
lose interest and walkaway. Like you did with your
military service and the oil company and the baseball
team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next
fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I
know what you're saying: there's so many other things
that you as President could involve yourself in.
Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to
do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the
sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program
over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie
Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why?

Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've
performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't
given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that
walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty
president, but even he never conceded an entire city
to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies,
the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a
piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans.
Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't
love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse
it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying
is: 'Take a hint.'

-Bill Maher

China II

Can this even be happening? Sometimes I wonder when we will have to change the name of this Country from United States of America to China II...? This is not a trial of four criminal, but the Anti-War movement is being prosecuted in its entirety.

"The first federal trial to arise out of an act of civil resistance to the Iraq War traces back to March 17, 2003, two days before Bush’s illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. That day, Danny Burns, Peter DeMott, and sisters Clare and Teresa Grady walked into their local military recruiting center and carefully poured a small amount of their own blood around the vestibule. They read a statement, as well as letters from Iraqi peace activists, then knelt to pray and awaited the authorities.

Originally tried in April 2004 in Tompkins County and charged with criminal mischief, the St. Patrick’s Four chose to represent themselves. They articulated a defense that centered around international law and the legal defense of necessity. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam veteran, spoke of the horrors of war, of men and women who, when asked to kill for dubious reasons, return forever changed. Danny Burns explained our constitutional obligation to international treaties as the “supreme law of the land” (Article 6), and why this planned invasion was in direct violation of the UN Charter. Clare Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian peacemaker. Teresa Grady reminded the court of how modern warfare harms women and children disproportionately, and so as a mother, saw no legal or moral justification to wage merciless war on Iraqi children who obviously posed no threat to our national security.

Months after the trial, Judge David Peebles admitted that the four had represented themselves 'probably better than some of the attorneys that practice in this court, frankly.' No wonder nine of twelve jurors voted to acquit.

Many thought the mistrial signaled the end of the saga. However, in February of this year, a federal grand jury decided to haul the four Christian parents back to court to stand trial for conspiracy charges. If convicted, each defendant could be locked up for six years an"

The Anti-War Movement March: From Istanbul to Binghamton

Quotable

"If you fall on the side that is pro-George, and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out."
- Cindy Sheehan

Not Funny at All

The Saga Continues

"According to Article IV of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons:

"All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

"Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty."

Iran (for example) has an inalienable right to buy a turn-key uranium enrichment facility and, if the financial details can be worked out, Russia (for example) "shall" sell it to them."

Read the Article

Seeing the Forest

"Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called the United States a "terrorist state" and said the United Nations headquarters should be moved away from New York.

The outspoken Chavez littered his speech to the UN world summit with anti-US comments which were strongly applauded. The ally of Cuba's President Fidel Castro followed this up with a press conference at which he accused the US administration of supporting terrorism."

What I find interesting is not the anti-Merican rhetoric. But the fact that the rhetoric is getting strong applause by the International Community. That shows how far the US has been isolating itself vis a vis the world and that how much out of touch this Administration is with the realities of the International life and opinion. One thing the Bushies must remember, is that no one can live in a vacuum.

Read the Article

Secrecy Goes On...

Why not have an inquiry? So that "Republican leaders [can] avoid the spectacle of [Plame Case] being debated on the House floor amid some fear that the measures could succeed if enough Republicans side with minority Democrats."

Read More

War Criminals On the Loose

"A former Israeli military chief, Moshe Yaalon, has cancelled a trip to London for fear of arrest on war crimes charges relating to attacks on Palestinian civilians and property.

The Israeli authorities have also warned the present chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, to avoid travel to the UK after a warrant was issued in London against a third officer, retired major general Doron Almog, for alleged crimes in the Gaza Strip. Israeli diplomats helped Mr Almog to evade arrest when he flew into Heathrow on Sunday by warning him not to leave the plane."

Read More

Only if our Government was not pandering to the Israelis, perhaps these war criminals would be apprehended and prosecuted.

:\

Reporter: "Mr. Bush, what's your position on Roe vs. Wade?"
Bush: "Who cares how folks git outta New Orleans, just as long as they git!"

All We Need To Know

There you have it. We now know who is in charge of the Reconstruction... Is this a bad dream gone nighmarish or what?

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Bush to Focus on Vision for Reconstruction in Speech

Is This a Surprise?

UPDATE

Picked up this interesting piece--worth the time to read it:

"Well, the latest spin the GOP Senators are giving for voting against the Hurricane Katrina independent commission is that - get this - there were 'procedural problems' with the amendment they were voting on. I know this because this is what they've told a number of you calling them, and you've reported it back to me - this is coming from several offices, so it's clearly a coordinated response to the calls they're getting (and a sign that they'r worried).

What this spin really means is that they opposed the amendment because it had a technical problem, but not because they actually had a problem with the substance of the amendment itself, setting up the independent commission - they're only problem is that the amendment setting up the commission was put on a bill in a wrong way."

AMERICAblog: Because a great nation deserves the truth


~~

Who wants to really know what went wrong and learn from it? Why would we? The Idiot in Chief has accepted responsibility, what else is there to investigate? It's over... Nothing to see... Move on.

"The Senate voted along party lines yesterday to reject creation of an independent panel to investigate the government's fumbling response to Hurricane Katrina.

The proposal, from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), would have established a panel similar to the one that examined the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The partisan wrangling came amid rising calls from members of both parties to change how the nation manages major disasters."

Separate Inquiry Fails to Gain Support

:)

They Have Simply No Shame...

"But while the victims are simply trying to get their bearings, the barracudas are circling. Naomi Klein, who witnessed this in Iraq, calls it 'disaster capitalism.' Congress has appropriated $62 billion already. Hundreds of billions more will be spent on reclaiming the Gulf Coast, rebuilding and relocation. The feeding frenzy has begun.

Already Halliburton is on hand with a no-bid contract for reconstruction. Fluor, Bechtel, the Shaw Group -- Republican-linked firms -- are lining up for contracts. Lobbyists like Joe Allbaugh, close friend of George Bush, and James Lee Witt, close friend of Bill Clinton -- both former heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- are advising their corporate clients to get teams on the scene. Normal rules of contracting and competition are being waived in the emergency. Big bucks are on the table. It is a time to be wired politically.

The ideologues are in the hunt, too. Newt Gingrich is circulating memos calling for turning the region into a massive enterprise zone, slashing corporate taxes, reducing regulations. The oil lobby is pushing for drilling in Alaska and off the shores of the United States. Right wing activist Grover Norquist calls for cutting taxes on the wealthy even more to stimulate the economy. Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flak suggests conservatives use the crisis to try out their favorite ideas -- vouchers for education and health care."

Hurricane Looting Not Over Yet

Quotable

Jon Stewart:
The president has vowed to personally lead the investigation into the government's failed response to Katrina? Isn't that a job perhaps someone else should be doing?

Samantha Bee:
No, not at all, Jon. To truly find out what went wrong, it's important for an investigator to have a little distance from the situation. And it's hard to get any more distant from it than the president was last week.

--The Daily Show
(thanks Bill)

Quotable

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
– Oscar Wilde

And the War Continues...

"The latest US/Iraqi offensive in Tal Afar petered out on Sunday, as the invaders discovered that the guerrillas in the city had used tunnels to escape. The Iraqis and the US had been saying that they wanted to prevent the guerrillas from getting away, but now they just have to declare victory and go home. Most of the city has been emptied out. Most of the residents had not been guilty of any thing, but now they are refugees."

Battle of Tal Afar

See also Cole's speech on topic:

Abusing America's Fear of Terrorism

The Fat Lady Has Just Begun Singing!

"Millions of people forced out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina may not be insured for the damage to their homes.

More than half of the properties in the city are understood to be insured only for hurricane damage, with insurers insisting that it was a flood that forced the evacuation of the city.

If US courts agree, this could save the insurance industry as much as $10bn (£5.4bn) and leave more than a million people destitute."

Insurers balk at paying out to 1 millions Katrina flood victims

The Right Conclusion

There is nothing more to say.

Quotable

"A feeble mind, conscious of its own feebleness, grows feeble under that very consciousness. As soon as the power of fear becomes known to it, there follows the fear of fear, and, on the first perturbation, reason abandons it."
-- Hector Berlioz

This Would Be Funny...

... If it wasn't true.

Remember

"On this anniversary, surrounded by the wreckage of four years of disastrously bad government, we must confront a profoundly disturbing reality. The performance of George W. Bush as president has proved to be far worse than even his most alienated critics could have predicted. His administration is far less concerned with our security than with its own self-serving ideology and its petty abuses of office.

Four years ago, as we contemplated potential threats from the enemies of civilization, it was impossible to conceive of the vast damage that our own government would inflict upon America before those enemies could strike again. The danger from the perpetrators of 9/11 has not abated, and suddenly we know how vulnerable we remain -- because the federal officials who have sworn to defend us, beginning with the president, have neither the character nor the competence to fulfill that oath."

The bitter lessons of four years

Tough Crowd

Oh... Lookee Lookee

Who would have thunk it?

"Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina."

Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Government...

"Is this the vision of America the anti-government ideologues have in mind? The wealthy buy their way out of trouble when disaster strikes, and the poor, the elderly, the weak are left in the direst of circumstances?"

The Progressive Magazine

Read This

I cannot quote any one passage from this article. It simply MUST be read. Pass it around. Send it to all who you know. Friend or foe. This must be read aloud. Must be re-read. A few times. Aloud and to yourself.


Israel's Successful Use of the Art of Realpolitik - by Ramzy Baroud

Will You See This on CNN?

BBC News Video--Grim images... not for the weak of heat

Not Fair...

I have been saying that for years and I do not get that kind of media attention... :) Not fair at all.

Crooks and Liars: "Dick Cheney: "Go Fuck Yourself"

Vice President Dick Cheney, in Gulfport, Mississippi on a tour of the Katrina hurricane zone was cursed out as he answered questions from reporters..."

See the Video via Crooks & Liars

Quotable

"If 9/11 was Bush's Woodstock, Katrina is his Altamont -- the place where his ability to unite people behind a flurry of flag-waving came to look like the hollow sham it always was."
--Tina Brown

Quotable

"The responsibility of ministers for the public safety is absolute, and requires no mandate. It is in fact the prime object for which governments come into existence."

-- Winston Churchill

Failure of the Free Market

I like reading Michael Parenti. He has been a critic of the Right, the Far Right and current Ultra Right government policies. It is a sad day when a minuscule Caribbean Country does a better job at protecting its people against natural disasters than the only remaining (supposedly) Superpower is capable of.

"In New Orleans there would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island in 2004, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.5 million people, more than 10 percent of the country’s population. The Cubans lost 20,000 homes to that hurricane---but not a single life was lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in the U.S. press.

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans had perished in New Orleans. Many people had “refused” to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain “stubborn.”

It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well for them."

How the Free Market Killed New Orleans

Tricke Down Economics?

... My ass!

"None of this is an oversight, or simple incompetence. It is the result of a campaign by most Republicans and too many Democrats to systematically vilify the role of government in American life. Manipulative politicians have convinced lower- and middle-class whites that their own economic pains were caused by 'quasi-socialist' government policies that aid only poor brown and black people — even as corporate profits and CEO salaries soared.

For decades we have seen social services that benefit everyone — education, community policing, public health, environmental protections and infrastructure repair, emergency services — in steady, steep decline in the face of tax cuts and rising military spending. But it is a false savings; it will certainly cost exponentially more to save New Orleans than it would have to protect it in the first place.

And, although the wealthy can soften the blow of this national decline by sending their kids to private school, building walls around their communities and checking into distant hotels in the face of approaching calamities, others, like the 150,000 people living below the poverty line in the Katrina damage area — one-third of whom are elderly — are left exposed."

Rotten Fruit of the 'Reagan Revolution'

Welcome to the Surreal

"Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

'Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated,' he said. 'That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man.'
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

'That's a kid,' he said. 'There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut.'

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
'There's an old woman,' he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. 'I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death,' he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. 'It's not on, but at least you can shut the door,' said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson."

NOLA.com: T-P Orleans Parish Breaking News Weblog

NeverEverWackyWacko Land...

"Michael reportedly wants to build an airport for aliens. According to Michael Luckman, director of the New York Center for Extraterrestrial Research and author of 'Alien Rock,' Jackson would like to set up the landing strip in the Nevada desert."

Read More... If you must

RIP Gilligan

"[Bob Denver] died Friday at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina of complications from treatment he was receiving for cancer."

TV's Gilligan, Dead at 70

Awwwww... My Heart is All Warmed Up

"'What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality,' she said during a radio interview with the American Public Media program 'Marketplace.' 'And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.'"

The Mother of All Bushes sees the Bright Side!!!

WOW...

Finally, newspeople acting like newspeople!!! I am utterly flabbergasted that this was said and was indeed aired. Let us hope that there will be more of it in the days and weeks to come...

See the Video

The Show Must Go On II...

The Alternate Reality creating Spin Machine keeps on spinning...

"'I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

'But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government."

Did the President fake a Katrina repair photo-op?

Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Here is why:

* Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

* The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

* The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

* The Red Cross shares the nation’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.

* The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access.

* The original plan was to evacuate all the residents of New Orleans to safe places outside the city. With the hurricane bearing down, the city government decided to open a shelter of last resort in the Superdome downtown. We applaud this decision and believe it saved a significant number of lives.

* As the remaining people are evacuated from New Orleans, the most appropriate role for the Red Cross is to provide a safe place for people to stay and to see that their emergency needs are met. We are fully staffed and equipped to handle these individuals once they are evacuated."

American Red Cross

It Was Known All Along...

"Much of New Orleans has become the Atlantis from hell, a toxic sludge pool of a looted former city, filled with dead bodies, burning in places, threatened with diseases like cholera and typhus that haven't visited the Big Easy since early in the last century, and with thousands upon thousands of the black poor and a few of the stranded better-to-do like doctors, nurses, and a few local officials left for days on end with next to no way out. It is, in short, the feral city that thirty years of science fiction films (and post-apocalyptic novels) have delivered to the American public as entertainment as well as prophesy. (Think, Escape from New York).

Now, try this passage: 'The evacuation of New Orleans in the face of [the] hurricane... looked sinisterly like Strom Thurmond's version of the Rapture. Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less -- mainly Black -- were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath.' Admittedly a vivid description, but certainly commonplace enough at the moment -- except that it, too, was written back in September 2004 by Mike Davis, also for Tomdispatch, and prophetically labeled, 'Poor, Black, and Left Behind.' It, too, concerned not Katrina's but Ivan's approach to New Orleans. So there we are. It was possible to know then the fundaments of just about everything that's happened now -- and not just from Tomdispatch either."

The Perfect Storm and the Feral City

The Show Must Go On...

"Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. 'Her relative called one of our stations,' Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog up and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

'That's the second time he brought her here,' one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

'What?'

'They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News Van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog.'

'Are you serious?' I ask. He says he is."

Jeraldo's Act

But... There Is No Election This Year

... Election year help to a swing state (Florida) and non-election year help to another State: An exercise in comparison and contrast.

"It's instructive, on that score, to compare the current response to Hurricane Katrina (in which the Three Stooges apparently have seized control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a bloodless coup) with the administration's efforts on behalf of the voters of Florida following last year's triple storms -- Charley, Frances and Ivan.

True, the 2004 disasters didn't completely take down a major metropolitan area by turning its urban center into a bowl of shit soup. But the difference in the federal goverment's performance before, during and after those storms had passed is stlll rather striking. It appears there's something special about years divisible by two -- and particularly every other year divisible by two -- that can inspire amazing feats of bureaucratic energy and competence, at least in large, populous swing states.

Here then, are some of the highlights from last year's relief efforts in Florida:

-- Gov. Jeb Bush sought federal help Friday while [Hurricane] Charley was still in the Gulf of Mexico. President Bush approved the aid about an hour after the hurricane made landfall.

-- By Monday afternoon, the cavalry seemed to be in place . . . Cargo planes were shuttling FEMA supplies from a Georgia Air Force base to a staging area in Lakeland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had shipped 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice. The first assistance checks to victims were to be shipped Monday night."

Whiskey Bar: Where There's a Will

:-\

What Else is Expected but Incompetence?

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows. And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA. The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.

[...]

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

"We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. "This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,'' she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures. "He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night."

Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign'

Red Cross Banned...

This is the weirdest thing I have seen so far... Red Cross is not allowed in because if people see there is help they may stay? Weird I tell you... weird.

TalkLeft: Red Cross Banned From Bringing Food and Supplies to Nola: "Red Cross Banned From Bringing Food and Supplies to Nola

Who Loots and Who Finds...

Check out the caption for the two photos above. The black man holding some food, chest deep in water has "looted" and the white woman, chest deep in water has "found" bread and soda...

The Three Stooges...

:-|

Shoot To Kill

So the order to shoot to kill looters finally came down evidencing the great and honorable belief that human life is less important and/or valuable than Nike shirts sold at K-Mart...

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Looters...

More I read about this more I find it infuriating... There has been looting going on for 5 years of our natural resources and they are worried about looters stealing shirts, food and water...

"One of the main reasons New Orleans is so vulnerable to hurricanes is the gradual disappearance of the wetlands on the Gulf Coast that once stood as a natural buffer between the city and storms coming in from the water. The disappearance of those wetlands does not have the name of a political party or a particular administration attached to it. No one wants to play, 'The Democrats did it,' or, 'It's all Reagan's fault.' Many environmentalists will tell you more than a century's interference with the natural flow of the Mississippi is the root cause of the problem, cutting off the movement of alluvial soil to the river's delta.

But in addition to long-range consequences of long-term policies like letting the Corps of Engineers try to build a better river than God, there are real short-term consequences, as well. It is a fact that the Clinton administration set some tough policies on wetlands, and it is a fact that the Bush administration repealed those policies--ordering federal agencies to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands.

Last year, four environmental groups cooperated on a joint report showing the Bush administration's policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands."

Why New Orleans is in Deep Water

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

"In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war."

Former Clinton Advisor: "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming" - International