This Is Not A Metaphore 

The Truth About Quicksand: You Don't Die

"Instead of being sucked all the way in, quicksand victims will float once they get about waist deep, according to a new study.

"Yet while the risk of vanishing has apparently evaporated, escaping the muck is still a tough task: To pull one leg free requires the amount of force needed to lift a small car. There are tricks, however."

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050928_quicksand.html

This site also offers some great nature photos, including tornadoes, quakes, and waves. Neat.

Fair Reviews Rally Coverage

Thanks to D for this reference:

"Hundreds of thousands of Americans around the country protested the Iraq War on the weekend of September 24-25, with the largest demonstration bringing between 100,000 and 300,000 to Washington, D.C. on Saturday.

"But if you relied on television for your news, you'd hardly know the protests happened at all. According to the Nexis news database, the only mention on the network newscasts that Saturday came on the NBC Nightly News, where the massive march received all of 87 words. (ABC World News Tonight transcripts were not available for September 24, possibly due to pre-emption by college football.)"

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2677

20 Shocking Facts About Our Voting System

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

Do you want to know more?

http://www.nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

25 Questions About The NOLA Disaster

Conspiratorial, or common sense? Some sample questions:

"5. Why did Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff not declare Katrina an "Incident of National Significance" until August 31 -- thus preventing the full deployment of urgently needed federal resources?
6. Why wasn't the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies, and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.
7. Similarly, why wasn't the Baltimore-based hospital ship USS Comfort ordered to sea until August 31, or the 82nd Airborne Division deployed in New Orleans until September 5?"

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=24875

Reid's Petition On Oil Profits

Here's the link:

http://www.giveemhellharry.com/page/petition/gas

Rodriguez On La Nueva Orleans

"No matter what all the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-latino25sep25,0,3215119.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion

Cleared 

More Good News: St. Patrick's Four Cleared On Federal Conspiracy

"In the first federal conspiracy trial against anti-war activists since the Vietnam War, defendants are claiming victory over government intimidation despite convictions on lesser counts, and severe restrictions on their testimony throughout the trial.

"After seven hours of deliberation, a jury found four Upstate New York anti-war activists not guilty on federal conspiracy charges for pouring their own blood inside a military recruitment station more than two years ago, but convicted them of other, lesser charges...

"The defendants had already gone to trial in a state court in April 2004 for criminal mischief charges resulting from the same action. But the judge in that case declared a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict, and prosecutors referred the case to the US Attorney’s office in Binghamton."

More tax dollars wasted on this filthy administration's pursuit of mischief.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2405

Will This Ill Wind Blow On DeLay As Well?

"Perhaps solving one of South Florida's most notorious crimes, police on Tuesday said they arrested three men in the 2001 ambush slaying of Konstaninos "Gus" Boulis - a murder that happened a few months after Boulis sold a fleet of casino boats to prominent Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a partner...

"Abramoff was once a close associate of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and raised thousands of dollars for President Bush's re-election campaign and for GOP congressional candidates. Abramoff is also under investigation in Washington for his lobbying activities on behalf of Indian tribes and for his role in paying for overseas trips for DeLay, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. House."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/12753458.htm

Arrived Safe This Morning

"WTF? I Mean, This Is, Like, The Gulf Coast!"

At Long Last: DeLay Indicted

In the darkest night, a glimmer of hope:

"A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom Delay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

"DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_go_co/delay_investigation

How Low Can They Go?

Yeah, reality TV is just about the speed of this pathetic administration. Put laura on Extreme Makeover? How about putting her on Nip/Tuck?

"Facing criticism that he appeared disengaged from the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has been looking for opportunities to show his concern. But the White House will take the effort a step further Tuesday, venturing into untested waters by putting the nation's first lady on reality television.

"Laura Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the feel-good, wish-granting hit 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.' Mrs. Bush sought to be on the program because she shares the 'same principles' that the producers hold, her press secretary said."

Would those same principles have anything to do with ratings and dollars? Thanks to D for this one.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002522643_weblaura26.html

Little Moron Says The "C" Word

The quote below really doesn't convey the difficulty with which he managed to choke it out. His appearance yesterday also featured one of his longest pauses (which I regrettably did not time), while his wasted peanut brain ran through its limited repertoire.

'''We can all pitch in by being better conservers of energy,' Bush said during a visit to the Energy Department. 'People just need to realize that the storms have caused disruption.'

"Bush's call for conservation, reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter's plea for energy restraint in the late 1970s, was a striking shift in emphasis for a president who has tended to focus more on boosting production."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12749019.htm

Even his rabid rightwing pundits are jumping ship on this one. O'Reilly keeps talking about the greed of the oil companies and curtailing their profits; little Cucker Tarlson last night ranted about people in private jets exhorting us to carpool, although he would likely document his rant with the names of wealthy liberals.

It will be interesting in the coming weeks to see whether the media whores keep sucking bush or bend over for audience ratings by reviling the oilocrats.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12749019.htm

Gone South

We Loaded Her Onto The Texas Trailer At 1 AM This Morning. She Was Heard Neighing, "Gulf Coast? You Gotta Be F-----g Kidding!"

More coverage Of 9/24 Rally

Thanks to JS for this link:

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3093

Great Joke For The Day

Thanks to SS for this one:

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the President his daily briefing.He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.""OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!" His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands. Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"

Stats For Monday Pt. 2

News Dissector quotes the Independent:

"U.S. forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan -- an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed -- that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the U.S. is having to import supplies from Israel.

"A government report says that U.S. forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine."

Stats for Monday

One way to help assess the size of Saturday's rally: what was the increase in the DC Metro's ridership?

"The Washington Post reported that by 5pm on Saturday, Sept. 24, the Metro rail ridership was 292,771, contrasted to 173,572 on an average Saturday. The AP picked a nice round number of100,000 demonstrators, the Columbus Dispatch put it at “thousands” in the headline. The fact that the mainstream corporate media has to lie so shamelessly about a rally where there were at least 250,000 people, is telling."

http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2005/09/27/#1466

The oge has lamented this before. Any underpaid lab tech without a pension plan can count bacteria in a petrie dish; but neither the gov nor the MSM will apply any scientific metrics in publishing crowd size. One can understand if not approve the gov's position; what is the media's excuse?

Cindy And Friends Arrested

On day 3 of the White House protest, she has escalated her challenge of the bush administration to include a cowardly Congress, the complicit media (at Saturday's rally), and today, civil disobedience, in the finest tradition of great American patriots.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/12744015.htm

Sharon Olds Rebuffs First Lady's Invite

The poet pennned a declination to Laura Bush to attend the National Book Festival in Washington:

"I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country - with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain - did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism - the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to."

But this is a poet, after all, and she is headed for the gut:

"So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092305S.shtml

The Genius Of Los Alamos Revived If Not Revealed? 

John Adams And Dr. Atomic At San Fran

So how do you orchestrate a nuclear explosion? New Yorkers will have to wait a while. San Farncisco will debut the opera that Adams didn't have left in him.

"Yet the sphinxlike Oppenheimer caught his interest. Apart from his scientific genius, Oppenheimer balanced a keen sense of ethics against his contempt for the mirthless follies of global politics. He was deeply versed in the humanities, a student of Sanskrit, the metaphysical Elizabethans and the world-weary Baudelaire. The name he chose for the Trinity project alludes to the John Donne Holy Sonnet that begins "Batter my heart, three person'd God": 14 ferocious lines bristling with images of warfare, imprisonment and sexual violation. The fictional Oppenheimer - portrayed by the Canadian baritone Gerald Finley - sings them in a setting of imposing majesty."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/arts/music/25gure.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Billions In bush Disaster Giveaways

Weep for us all.

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor...

"The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more...

"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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/national/nationalspecial/26spend.html?th&emc=th

9/24 March Videos

Link to Truthout's videos of Sheehan's brief speech and some moments of the march:

http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Cousin Of Komodo

Alien Predator Lizards Spread In Florida

Card-carrying neocons:

"Nile monitor lizards were first reported in Cape Coral a decade or so ago and quickly flourished in and along the city's 400-odd miles of canals. Officials suspect they were first loosed by ill-intentioned reptile traders or by unsuspecting pet owners, startled that their hand-size hatchling had grown into ornery 30-pound, seven-foot-long adults. The lizards' current population in Cape Coral is estimated at more than 1,000, and when they nest, they lay around 60 eggs.

"While the lizards are preyed on by Nile crocodiles and felled by diseases in their native Africa, they have no predators in South Florida once they grow beyond a couple of feet in length. The lizards are also elusive, skittish and maddeningly difficult to catch. They can hold their breath under water for upwards of an hour, swim, burrow deep tunnels, dart up trees in seconds and clock an on-land speed of 15 mph."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12741631.htm

Knowing Your Enemy: Crash Course on Intelligent Design

Intelligent design is a supernatural belief masquerading as a theory of science. This brief article looks at

"... the two main arguments—irreducible complexity and specified complexity—that ID proponents use to support their claim that a Supreme Being is responsible for many or all aspects of life."

http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html

The bottom line is, you don't mix supernatural faith systems (religions) with science.

Sptember 24 Photos You Won't See On CNN

Exceptional Photo Of September 24 March On White House (All Photos Courtesy JS)

The oge Pauses For Nutrition At Protest 

bush Tries To Block Breasts At Protest

Why You Guys Really Should Go To The Protests #2 

Why You Guys Really Should Go To The Protests #1 

Houston Under Allison 2001 

The Arithmetic Of Evacuation Pt. II: Moronic Non-Governance Just Goes On

Moronic quote for the day:

"Acknowledging that 'being on the highway is a deathtrap,' Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.

"Mr. White and the top official in Harris County, Judge Robert Eckels, admitted that their plans had not anticipated the volume of traffic. They maintained that they had not urged such a widespread evacuation, although only a day earlier they invoked the specter of Hurricane Katrina, and told residents that the 'time for waiting was over.'

"Officials also made matters worse for themselves by announcing at one point that they would use inbound lanes on one highway to ease the outbound crush, only to abort the plan later, saying it was impractical."

And from that other political wizard who is supposed to govern Louisiana:

"'Head north, head north,' she said. 'You cannot go east, you cannot go west, head north. If you know the local roads that go north, take those.'"

Sounds like a plan to me. Or a misquote of Horace Greeley. And here's a taste of a man's own medicine:

"'The question is how many people will be gravely ill and die sitting on the side of the freeway,' said State Representative Garnet Coleman, Democrat of Houston. 'Dying not from the storm, but from the evacuation.'

"Mr. Coleman's family had tried to leave the city Thursday at his urging - he is traveling on the West Coast - but they gave up after 12 hours of stalled traffic, without even passing the city's outer ring highway."

And finally, as Houston's mayor was trying to save face in the best political manner, by lying:

"'If you're not in the evacuation zone, follow the news,' the mayor said. 'The storm is oscillating. We may be in a better position.' And he maintained: 'We have never called for the evacuation of Houston. We asked people to use their common sense.'"

My god, Mr. Mayor, if the people had any common sense, do you think they would elect the frauds and felons who head government at all levels?

Allen Parkway, One Of Houston's Super Streets 

THE ARITHMETIC OF EVACUATION: NON-GOVERNANCE JUST GOES ON

The morons we elect to public office (or more correctly, buy their way there) assured us that they had learned their lessons from Katrina. On the other hand, they apparently have never seen a disaster flick. Wasn't it in Deep Impact that we saw the terrifying traffic jam caused by evacuees fleeing an anticipated tidal wave? Wasn't that the one where the distraught mother in the stranded SUV handed off her babe-in-arms to the motorcyclist to save?

"As Texans fled the coast and the metropolis of Houston -- and as gasoline supplies evaporated along the way -- a 100-mile traffic jam blocked I-45 from downtown Houston to points north. The domino effect: Motorists idling in the jam also ran out of fuel, making it worse."

Now consider this remark:

'''This is unprecedented,' said Mark Cross of the Texas Department of Transportation."

Unprecedented? I thought they learned their lessons from Katrina. Unprecedented is not the same as unpredicted. There is a terrible irony here. The advertised problem with Katrina is that they didn't evacuate; the truth is, they didn't plan for evacuation. And Texas has simply repeated the dumb mistake; jawboning about evacuation is not planning. Remember your grade-school fire drills? The teacher didn't just say, "leave." She drilled a pattern of evacuation: a sequence---if no more than by rows---a route---down the hall, left, out the south door--- a method, or means---a pied, generally, but providing for Andy in his wheelchair--- a destination---assemble and stay by the swings---and enforcement---student marshals, or her own stern voice commands.

The same basic principles apply to any evacuation. Taken together, they constitute a plan, god forbid, but now consider this remark:

"Said R. David Paulison, acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: 'That's why we tell people to leave early. We feel we have plenty of time to get people out of harm's way.'''

No, sorry, R. David, it doesn't work that way. If you have plenty of time, then you can order the evacuation in a sequence. Designate the most threatened neighborhoods first, by postal zip, telephone exchange, street addresses, etc, and schedule their departure hours; most people will follow instructions, but those who don't are told ahead of time that they will be bumped to the last group. Along with the sequence you consider the routes; they go together. It is not higher mathematics to calculate the number of vehicles in your city and the capacity of the roads; that's how your underpaid transportation workers without a pension plan determined where to place how many traffic lights and time them. The data are already there. Since the means is cars and trucks for most evacuees (air lift, ambulance, and so on for special needs people is a smaller matter), these, unlike the feet of the students, need tires, gas, oil, batteries, and water, so folks need to check their fluids, rubber, and jumper cables before leaving; one assumes they are also directed to take some food, water, maps, and flashlights. One assumes they are instructed to tape a little sign setting forth their destination on the windshield. (One assumes too much.)

Routing should fall into two categories, those motorists with fixed destinations (brother in Dallas) and those who are simply headed out. The latter group should be afforded established relief centers geographically determined to facilitate orderly traffic; assign these by alphabetical name, license plate number, or whatever; a B.S. with a statistics major could make workable projections. Offering the option of a brief stay at the nearest relief center until the storm passes is an excellent plan for many residents because it lets them return quickly. In the big picture, of course, it is absurd that disaster-prone cities do not contain their own resources (consider the paradigm of designated public bomb shelters, developed in the '50's, many of which are still in effect today, even including the citizens who have priority access).

Finally, station your police, guard, or troops at all key intersections to direct the traffic. Each of these guys should have a detailed map---not all that complicated---of the predetermined routes and can direct traffic as needed at the outset, which is the most crucial point, as well as at interim points.

Back to the real world:

"Even with Rita's possible course correction, great potential harm thundered through the Gulf of Mexico and approached densely populated, low-lying Houston at 10 mph, faster than many of those vehicles could move along the highway.

"Though the evacuation seemed mostly orderly -- slow, but orderly -- problems surfaced:
Texas officials did not swiftly convert lightly traveled inbound lanes into outbound exit routes. The gasoline shortages severely complicated matters."

It isn't bad enough that Texas and FEMA couldn't organize a planned motor evacuation. Absurdities occurred at airports as well:

"Many screeners for the Transportation Security Administration didn't show up for work, causing long airport delays."

Who would believe that underpaid screeners with no pension plan would abandon their posts in an emergency? Or did we forget that lesson, supposedly learned from the cops in NOLA? So tell me why we didn't just skip the screening process? Like, a couple thousand brain-challenged suicide bombers foresaw all this and were primed to take out the evacuating aircraft?

To sum up: yes, it seems to be going better than NOLA, but if you are a healthcase broke down somewhere north of Houston without gas, having no idea what a Level 4 will do when it descends on your 1996 Toyota, that may be poor consolation. Here are the main points: all levels of your government are run by political morons who have abrogated their Constitutional mandate to protect you. They are dumber than your dumbest nephew. They can't fry a hamburger, change a lightbulb or a tire, or defrost a refrigerator. They have gutted the agencies that were designed to protect you and replaced professionals with their college roommates.

Count on no government help in an emergency for 3-5 days, longer if the disaster lies outside their experience (and that includes a lot). Expect this whether you are in your apartment, your car, church, or whorehouse.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12718248.htm

Finally, paroxysms of anger, brought on by the sudden realization that you have paid billions in tax dollars precisely to develop the disaster plans that don't exist, that you have paid billions more to create huge, redundant government bureaucracies that amount to little more than sanctuaries of cronyism and nepotism, can be dehydrating.

DoomSayers: The View From Below Down: Clusterf--k Nation

For those who think the oge sanitizes too much, or glosses the grim reality of modern life, here, in an effort to present a broader range of viewpoints, are excerpts from Jim Kunstler's most recent posts; he writes pretty well, but what distinguishes his work are the unrelenting pessimism and the contempt he expresses for the foundation of modern life, the non-leaders in government, and the mindlesss masses, all of whom and which he pronounces doomed.

"Was it a good thing to buy a 3,600 square foot house 32 miles outside Minneapolis with an interest-only adjustable rate mortgage -- with natural gas for home heating running at $12 a unit and gasoline over $3 a gallon? Was it the right choice to run three credit cards up to their $5000 limit? Was I chump to think my pension from Acme Airlines would really be there for me? Do I really owe the Middletown Hospital $17,678 for a gall bladder operation that took forty-five minutes? And why did they charge me $238 for a plastic catheter?

"...In this remarkable three weeks since New Orleans was shredded, no Democrat has stepped into the vacuum of leadership, either, with a different vision of what we might do now, and who we might become. This is the kind of medium that political maniacs spawn in. Something is out there right now, feeding on the astonishment and grievance of a whipsawed middle class, and it will have a lot more nourishment in the months ahead.

"...The country is full of people now who want gold stars for running their household car fleet on discarded Fry-Max oil from the local Dunkin Donuts. . . or on oil squeezed from hemp seeds... Now the scary part of this is that these ideas are coming generally from the smarter people in our society. The dumb ones are are praying for the Rapture, or waiting for the market to magically fix everything, or sitting around the suburbs of Houston oiling their riot guns in front of the Nascar telecast."

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary15.html

Evacuation Disasters: Bus Explodes, Burns, Kills elderly

They haven't blamed bush for this one yet.

"A bus carrying as many as 45 elderly Hurricane Rita evacuees from Houston exploded south of Dallas this morning, killing as many as 20 people, according to Dallas County Sheriff's Sgt. Don Peritz. The latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center has the hurricane on track for landfall along Southwest Louisiana and upper Texas coasts late today or tonight."

http://www.cnn.com/

Hentoff On Why Roberts Is Dangerous To The Average Citizen

"...Roberts has approved the 'good faith' exception to police searches and seizures. This would allow police to testify that they acted in 'good faith' in what would eventually turn out to be an illegal search. As Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told me, this 'exception' lets judges wholly rely on the word of the police, 'but on whom may the citizens rely to protect their Fourth Amendment rights?'

"I use John Roberts's glaring lack of experience of the real, gritty world as an example of cloistered judges. But as for future nominations to the Supreme Court, Stuart Taylor's warnings should not be forgotten: 'The Supreme Court is supposed to sit above politics and apart from popular whims. But when a large majority of the Court's justices have never cross-examined a lying cop or a slippery CEO, never faced a jury . . . something has gone wrong. As the Court has lost touch with the real-world ramifications of its decisions, our judicial system has clearly suffered.'

"If the leaders of the Democratic Party were awake, this might well be an invigorating, rallying message for them to send to the people about the lords of our fates."

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,hentoff,67940,6.html

Woman Of The Moment---And Maybe A Hell Of A Lot Longer 

Cindy Rebukes Hillary, Dems

This woman seems to the oge to grow in stature by the month. Her direct manner, honesty, and common-sense command of human nature cut right through the contrived webs of the politicians and pundits. Now she is gradually but pointedly ratcheting up her plain analysis of who and what are wrong in Washington.

"(In New York) Sheehan...kept her focus on Bush, calling him 'a liar' whose 'reckless, callous, and moronic policies have made our country vulnerable.' Bush, she said, had proven himself a coward who cares little about the troops in Iraq.

“'I hate to be harsh,' she said, 'but we’re not accepting any excuses for not bringing our troops home.'

"But Sheehan isn’t stopping her critique with Bush. On the contrary, she has begun to set her sights on Congress and the Democratic Party as well. When she spoke in Brooklyn on the night before, she took note of the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq and– like most Senate Democrats–has done little to bring the troops home. Clinton, in fact, has filed legislation calling for more troops.

"In an interview after her speech, Sheehan told the Voice she was 'so frustrated' by leading Democrats like Clinton 'who should be leaders on this issue, but are not.' Already, she has set up a future meeting with New York’s junior senator this weekend. And she plans to sit down with the state’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer, too. 'It’s time for them to step up and be the opposition party,' she said. 'This war is not going to end unless the Democrats are on board with us.'"

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,lombardiweb,68015,2.html

Huffington: Bolton Could Be Target In Plame

She makes some good points and accounts for the Bolton-Miller connection:

"So could Ambassador Bolton actually be a target of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation? When considering this question, it's important to keep in mind that he's never been subpoenaed or questioned by the Plamegate grand jury -- and, as a lawyer who does work for the New York Times put it: 'The target of a grand jury investigation would not ordinarily be subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury.'

"So here is what we know: We know that Fleitz was the connection to the CIA, and that Bolton was close to Scooter Libby (and the rest of the neocons, of course) and Judy Miller (for whom he was an important source, although the last time she quoted him by name was in 1999 when he was at the American Enterprise Institute). And here is what we don't know: we don't know the pathway through which Plame's identity got into Novak's column. Did Miller learn about Plame from her old chum Bolton? Did she pass that info on to Libby? Or had Bolton already told Libby? And Rove? Or was it all just passed around and around in a cozy game of neocon phone tag? It makes one wonder more than ever before what Bolton and Miller talked about when he visited her in jail."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/plamegate-the-john-bolto_b_7648.html

Onion Outdoes Itself With This One

"WASHINGTON, DC—According to White House sources, President Bush is bracing for intensified criticism following Monday's report that the body of Tyler Sheehan, son of outspoken anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, was recovered from the receding floodwaters in New Orleans...

"Cindy Sheehan was unavailable for comment, as she was busy trying to contact her lone surviving son Teddy, a meteorologist studying global warming with the International Geophysical Foundation in Antarctica, who is believed to be marooned on a 45-square-mile chunk of the shrinking Ross Ice Shelf that broke off Tuesday morning."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40764

Leahy: Aye On Roberts

He says he believed him when he denied being an ideologue. . .

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/12700508.htm

Feds Raise Rate Again; More to Come

Remember how snake-oil huckster Greenspan helped bush get his tax cuts through first?

"Saying that Hurricane Katrina was unlikely to pose a 'persistent threat' to the economy, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Tuesday for the 11th time in a row and signaled that more increases were on the way.

"In an unusually long statement, the central bank acknowledged that the hurricane's devastation was likely to cause higher energy prices, higher joblessness and greater uncertainty in the months ahead."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/business/21fed.html?th&emc=th

Maybe repeal of the estate tax will help the average guy too.

Texas Serves B16 On Sex Abuse Coverup

"Mr. Shea said yesterday that he would challenge the constitutionality of the diplomatic recognition of the Holy See on the grounds that it goes against the First Amendment clause barring laws 'respecting an establishment of religion.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/national/21vatican.html?th&emc=th

Kerry Will Vote No On Roberts

http://www.johnkerry.com/features/robertsExcerpts.html

Your Tax Dollars Helped FEMA Elect bush In Florida

Under-reported or ignored by the collusive MSM, Mike Brown's first disaster was the political manipulation of FEMA dollars in Florida:

"Some Homeland Security sources said FEMA's efforts to distribute funds quickly after Frances and three other hurricanes that hit the key political battleground state of Florida in a six-week period last fall were undertaken with a keen awareness of the looming presidential elections,” according to a May 19 Washington Post story.

"Homeland Security sources told the Post that after the hurricanes that Brown 'and his allies [recommended] him to succeed Tom Ridge as Homeland Security secretary because of their claim that he helped deliver Florida to President Bush by efficiently responding to the Florida hurricanes.

"The South Florida Sun-Sentinel uncovered emails from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that confirmed those allegations and directly implicated Brown as playing politics at the expense of hurricane victims.

“As the second hurricane in less than a month bore down on Florida last fall, a federal [FEMA] consultant predicted a "huge mess" that could reflect poorly on President Bush and suggested that his re-election staff be brought in to minimize any political liability, records show,” the Sentinel reported in a March 23 story.

“Two weeks later, a Florida official summarizing the hurricane response wrote that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was handing out housing assistance 'to everyone who needs it without asking for much information of any kind.'

"The records the Sentinel obtained were contained in hundreds of pages of Gov. Jeb Bush's storm-related e-mails the paper received from the governor’s office under the threat of a lawsuit.

"The explosive charges of mismanagement of disaster relief funds made against Brown and FEMA were confirmed earlier this year following a four-month investigation by Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.'

Do you want to know more, including specifics of outrageous payments?

http://freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1460

More FEMA Madness: Ice Truckers Paid $800 A Day, Down And Back Again

"The federal government is diverting hundreds of truckloads of bagged ice cubes from the Gulf Coast hurricane-relief effort to cold storage in Portland and other cities.

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has more ice than it can use in the hurricane zone and wants to keep it in storage for use in a future emergency.

"But critics, including some truck drivers who have been paid $800 a day while hauling the same loads for a week or more, say the process seems like a waste of taxpayers' money.

"'The $9,000 they're paying me to move this load should have gone to some family down there,'" said Loren Reeves, who hauled his load of ice from New York state to Alabama before being sent to Maine. "'There is definitely millions being wasted that could go to people who need it.'"

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0920-09.htm

And more from the Press-Herald:

"The Army Corps has a $100 million contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide ice to the area that was hit by Hurricane Katrina and have it ready to deliver to other areas that may be hit by Hurricane Rita or other natural disasters.

"The decision to ship ice 1,400 miles from Selma, Ala., to Portland, Maine, has been criticized by some as wasteful. The critics include truck drivers who were being paid $800 a day for the use of their trucks. Many tractor trailer drivers brought ice to the Gulf Coast a week or more ago and then were sent away without unloading."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/local/050921ice.shtml

Why don't they just dump it in the Arctic where it's needed?

Botched Katrina Relief Infuriates Brits, Euros

US import regulations apparently have entangled a lot of the donations in red tape:

"'There will be a cloud of smoke above Little Rock soon - of burned food, of anger and of shame that the world's richest nation couldn't organise a p**s up in a brewery and lets Americans starve while they arrogantly observe petty regulations.'"

And:

"'Everyone is revolted by the chaotic shambles the US is making of this crisis. Guys from Unicef are walking around spitting blood.

"'This is utter madness. People have worked their socks off to get food into the region.'"

And:

"Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption.

"And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit."

Pear juice? Hope that didn't bust your budget, guys.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16147117&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=exclusive--58--up-in-flames-name_page.html

Casualty Of Oil? 

Link To NRDC Action Site: Petition Congress To Preserve Arctic

Thanks to LS for this one:

http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/

Reid: Will Vote No On Roberts

Let's hope the rest line up behind him.

Bloomberg Goons Bust Up Cindy Sheehan Rally

Yeah. They didn't have a permit for the bullhorn.

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan said Tuesday she was hurt slightly in a scuffle that erupted when police broke up a rally as she was at the microphone."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/20/sheehan.protest.ap/index.html

Thanks, D. Another reason to throw a few bucks Freddy's way.

Bank Of WalMart Coming Soon?

Not a joke. Utah is first in line. File your comments with the FDIC now:

http://factchecker.purpleocean.org/

Do They Or Don't They?

I defy anyone to make sense out of this, from this morning's online LATimes:

"OPINION

Editorial: Confirm Roberts

If the Democrats want to be taken seriously, they should not vote to approve John G. Roberts Jr.'s appointment to the Supreme Court."

So check out the editorial decision. Was somebody playing games? Or just couldn't believe it?

http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/es8L0JIaOD0G2B0GuT70Eh

Science Of Cursing

Natalie Angier surveys the current research and some interesting historical lessons on saying bad words; not surprisingly, the curse functions in a number of primitive and complex ways to facilitate socialization, mediating between emotional imperatives to act out and rationalized behavior. In the process, she has the journalist's rare opportunity to play a bit:

"That the brain's executive overseer is ablaze in an outburst of coprolalia, Dr. Silbersweig said, demonstrates how complex an act the urge to speak the unspeakable may be, and not only in the case of Tourette's. The person is gripped by a desire to curse, to voice something wildly inappropriate. Higher-order linguistic circuits are tapped, to contrive the content of the curse. The brain's impulse control center struggles to short-circuit the collusion between limbic system urge and neocortical craft, and it may succeed for a time.

"Yet the urge mounts, until at last the speech pathways fire, the verboten is spoken, and archaic and refined brains alike must shoulder the blame."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/20curs.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

The Id Of Grover Nyquist 

Another Web Of Deceit And Larceny in bush Administration

Just look at the names of the vipers and their dirty little dens associated with this nasty operative.

"A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year.

"The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader...

"Mr. Safavian had recently been working on developing contracting policies for the multibillion-dollar relief effort after Hurricane Katrina...

"He helped start Janus-Merritt Strategies, a consulting firm, with Grover G. Norquist, the head of the conservative advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform and a close political ally of the Bush administration.

"Mr. Safavian worked with Mr. Abramoff in the Washington lobbying offices of Preston Gates & Ellis, a Seattle-based firm. According to lobbying records, Mr. Safavian shared at least one client with Mr. Abramoff, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and also represented Microsoft, the Port of Seattle and the Dredging Contractors of America.

"His wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the House Government Reform Committee, which is responsible for overseeing government procurement and is, among other things, expected to conduct the Congressional investigation into missteps after Hurricane Katrina."

The truth about the Katrina disaster would have been---and still could be---another casualty among this filthy crew.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/politics/20lobby.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

I don't think anyone but Ghost Busters could walk into the white house or the halls of Congress without getting slimed.

Who Said It?

"Our expectations and our standards are pretty low. Our politicians try very hard to live up to those low standards."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20gov.html?th&emc=th

True, Illinois isn't known for the stellar quality of its politics.

NASA's New Spaceship 

Shame And Hope

The last half-dozen administrations didn't give a flying F about the space program, being stupid, small-thinking people who couldn't dream or create, so we ended up with a small fleet of dangerous, obsolescent space trucks that never did overcome the engineering challenges of take-off and re-entry.

NASA seems prepared now to go back to a basic rocket, retaining some reuseable components but jettisoning the winged glider in favor of the old-fashioned parachute capsule. In the meantime, Americans can revile the impoverished spirit of their leaders who have reduced us now to having to beg and pay the Russians for each astronaut of ours they lift to orbit. Shame.

http://www.space.com/news/050919_nasa_moon.html

Politics Vs. Governance

"...the same discipline and organization that's made the White House into a hugely effective political machine has hobbled its capacity to govern. Blocking data from lower-level political appointees and civil servants that's inconsistent with what it wants to do or sheds doubt on its wisdom, for example, may be effective politics, in the short term. It keeps the media and the opposition party at bay.

"But the same squelching of troublesome information prevents top policy makers from ever getting the data they need."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0919-25.htm

Sheehan: Go To Washington, No Excuses

"Sheehan told the antiwar supporters that she won’t take any excuses for their absence during Saturday’s march on Washington, because it will only prolong the Bush administration’s 'unjust' cause.

"'If you don’t go, you’ll be sorry,' she said before departing to New York City to continue the tour."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0919-06.htm

Quote For the Day

"If you play a Windows XP installation CDROM backwards, you hear a message fromSatan. Even worse... if you play it forwards, it installs Windows XP."

---Phil Giltner

Another Link to Lobby Senators On Roberts Nomination

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=19628

Quote for The Day

Who said it?

"We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes. We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war, and is hostile to the poor."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091905Y.shtml

Link To Petition Senators On Roberts Nomination

It's getting close. And don't take Schumer for granted on this.

http://www.savethecourt.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?auid=1112173&c=mwK0JbNTJrF&b=1053741&action=4376&template=x.ascx

Looting Vs. Finding. Check Out Snopes' Analysis: http://www.snopes.com/katrina/photos/looters.asp

Link to Protest bush Economic Exploitation Of Katrina

Revocation of Davis-Bacon wage protections and awarding non-comp, cost-plus contracts to thieves like Haliburton are just the beginning of this filthy administration's exploitation of the reconstruction of NOLA. Link to petition Congress:

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/post_Katrina_attack

Tenet Health Care Corpse. ---Er, Tenet Health Care Corp. 

Why We Need A Single-Payer Health Care System: Tenet Corp Example

Try this one. Tenet runs a chain of 73 hospitals. One of them, Memorial, just made news in NOLA:

"...the hardest blow to overcome may be the public relations hit that came with discovery of 45 bodies at the company's Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans. Although they're working hard to tell Tenet's side of the story, saying hospital workers went far beyond the call of duty to save patients, executives acknowledge that the body-count headlines are the last thing the company needs.

"The company said 21 of the corpses were those of Memorial patients, most very sick, who died naturally before the storm hit, during the storm or while waiting for evacuation. The 24 other deaths occurred in a long-term-care unit leased by another company on the hospital's seventh floor, Tenet said. None of its patients drowned, and the hospital never ran out of food, water or medicine, the company said."

Of course, the good folks at Tenet had problems well before Katrina hit:

"Chief among those problems are allegations that surfaced almost three years ago that a Redding hospital performed hundreds of unneeded open-heart surgeries for profit. Tenet avoided trials by paying the government, patients and their survivors nearly $450 million. Federal authorities are investigating similar allegations at three Los Angeles hospitals operated until recently by Tenet."

But the story goes on:

"Tenet was hit by more bad news in 2002 when it was accused of gaming the system for compensating hospitals for the care of the sickest patients. The allegations led to a racketeering suit by Florida's attorney general."

The surprising thing here is that Florida can recognize a racket. But let's check another state:

"U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is wrapping up prosecution in San Diego of the company and administrators at Tenet's Alvarado hospital, who are accused of bribing physicians to refer patients. Lam's counterparts in several other cities have opened similar probes."

You are hearing nice stories about the staff at Memorial, carrying patients up to the roof for helicopter evacuation, but you may want to offset these with the fact that the filthy butchers in Redding cut into the hearts of hundreds of other patients for no other reason than to boost profits. I could give a flying F about Tenet's financial prospects. I want to know why it still exists at all. It is one thing to watch Ameriquest build an empire in the mortgage industry as doomed to collapse as a sand castle at high tide, but health care? Why do we tolerate its privitization? The prime goal of these corporations is to make money; health care is merely their product. What we are getting is predictable exorbitant costs---fixed not by personal choices in an open marketplace, but by the collusive practices of the insurance rackets that hold the average American hostage to whatever health plan his employer happens to afford--- and too often dubious quality.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tenet17sep17,0,102287.story?track=tottext

Where bushSpeak Comes From

Thanks to RH for this piece of satire:

http://www.badmash.org/videos/videos_flv.php?v=george_bush_512K_Stream

The Smokies 

RFK Jr's Impassioned Speech At Sierra Summit

It's a great, rambling speech studded with insights and implications:

"I believe that the free market is the most efficient and democratic way to distribute the goods of the land and that the best thing that could happen to the environment is if we had true free market capitalism in this country because the free market promotes efficiency and efficiency means the elimination of waste and pollution of course is waste. The free market also would encourage us to properly value our natural resources and it’s the under valuation of those resources that causes us to use them wastefully. But in a true free market economy you can’t make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community.

"But what polluters do is they make themselves rich by making everybody else poor. They raise standards of living for themselves by lowering quality of life for everybody else and they do that by evading the discipline of the free market.

"You show me a polluter; I’ll show you a subsidiary. I’ll show you a fat cat using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market. And force the public to pay his production costs. That’s what all pollution is, it’s always a subsidy, it’s always a guy trying to cheat the free market."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091705Z.shtml

Why isn't this guy in the front ranks for 2008?

Paul Craig Roberts Calls for Impeachment

I know, he's another conservative, but one makes partners where he can these days; the enemy of my enemy...

"Dead and wounded Americans are too high a price to pay for a war based on deception. This alone is reason to end the war, if necessary by impeaching Bush and Cheney and arresting the neoconservatives for treason. Naked aggression is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard, and neoconservatives have brought this shame to America."

http://antiwar.com/roberts/

Get Yours: Nice Video Game Featuring The Rag Bag potus

http://fishki.net/video/bush.swf

thanks to J for this one...and don't forget to toss the little nitwit around with your mouse.

Amnesty International Collaborates On Lord Of War

We all knew about the christian recht's venture into Hollywood productions; here is a refreshing liaison:

"AIUSA's collaboration with the film will help advance our US-based action work within the international Control Arms Campaign. See the film, join Amnesty International, and lobby the US government to leadglobal efforts to stop transfers of small arms and light weapons to human rightsabusers."

http://www.amnestyusa.org/lordofwar/

No Real Surprise #2: Power Behind The Power

Well, duh on this one too, an obvious point that is more often discarded out of motives of greed than ignorance.

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - Twenty-five months after a blackout darkened cities from New York to Toronto and Detroit, the Energy Department and its Canadian counterpart held their first public technical discussion on the episode Thursday to talk about one factor widely considered to have been behind it: the deregulation of the electric system.

"'The most serious mistake we can make is pretending that markets do things that they do not do,' said Kellan Fluckiger, executive director of the electricity division at the Alberta Department of Energy. 'Markets allocate risk, they allocate capital, they provide price signals. Markets do not have a conscience, they do not provide social policy, and they do not do things they are not paid to do.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/16/politics/16blackout.html

No Real Surprise: Sharon's Bid

He's either masking schemes to hardline in his old fashion, as a sop to US pressure, or he is coming to terms with the fact that only Palestinian statehood can preserve a Zionist hegemony in Israel (compare the birthrates):

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6f245506-26b4-11da-b6fe-00000e2511c8.html

Glimpse Of An Iraq Exit Strategy?

This sounds as much like the outcome of a civil war as it does a planned strategy, unless, of course, the Sunnis were to impose another totalitarian state under a strong Baathist:

"... they are convinced that the United States supports the partition of Iraq into three statelets in order to eliminate Iraq as an Arab country, and they believe that Persian Iran will be the big winner over a shattered Iraq."

This is not a very lucid article, but the substance of the reporting is interesting:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050916/hearing_a_faint_iraq_strategy.php

Quote Of The Day

"...so bumbling, so stupid, so incompetent, so corrupt..."

----Rep. Maurice Hinchey, of the bush administration

Ugly Side of Katrina Response: Gretna, La.

Connected to New Orleans by a bridge over the Mississippi River, the Town of Gretna, two-thirds white and suburban, bussed the first wave of refugees miles away, and then, confronting the challenge of increasing numbers, decided to protect their own diminished resources, using armed force to close the bridge.

The town stands by its decisions. Survival scenarios are not just about altruism, heroics, and sacrifice.

"GRETNA, La. — Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans — trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city — the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move.

"'This wasn't just one man's decision,' Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said Thursday. 'The whole community backs it.'

"Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade remained in place into the Labor Day weekend. Gretna (pop. 17,500) is a feisty blue-collar city, two-thirds white, that prides itself on how quickly its police respond to 911 calls; it warily eyes its neighbor, a two-thirds black city (pop. about 500,000) that is also a perennial contender for the murder capital of the U.S."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gretna16sep16,1,2856291.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Brown Passes The Buck

So what did you expect? No body told the pathetic little weasel to keep his mouth shut (thanks to D for this lead).

"Hours after Hurricane Katrina passed New Orleans on Aug. 29, as the scale of the catastrophe became clear, Michael Brown recalls, he placed frantic calls to his boss, Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff and to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr.

"Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he told the officials in Washington that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and her staff were proving incapable of organizing a coherent state effort, and that his field officers in the city were reporting an 'out of control' situation."

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/nation/12649184.htm

Dean On Roberts: Wrong Man For The Job

"Roberts missed a crucial opportunity to answer legitimate concerns about his record and show compassion for those who have been excluded from the American Dream. The consistent mark of Roberts' career is a lack of commitment to making the Constitution's promise of equal protection a reality for all Americans, particularly the most vulnerable in our society...

"He has opposed laws protecting the rights of girls and young women to have the same opportunities in sports as boys and young men. He has argued that politicians, not individual women themselves, ought to control women's reproductive health care. He has opposed various remedies for the racial injustices which have occurred in America since slavery and which persist today. He has consistently joined the radical right in seeking to weaken voting rights protections, in essence attacking the rights of black and Hispanic voters to cast their ballot without paying poll taxes or being subjected to intimidation or gerrymandering. He fought against protecting all Americans from workplace discrimination. Most worrisome, he refused to answer questions on his limited view of the right to personal privacy that most Americans take for granted...

" Now is not the time for a Chief Justice who is bent on turning back the progress we have made in moving America forward.

"Judge Roberts is said to love the law, but loving the law without loving the American people enough to protect their individual rights and freedoms will make our American community weaker. And the exercise of the law without compassion - something that Judge Roberts and so many on the far right have consistently been guilty of - undermines the grace and wisdom of the founders whose sense of balance and fairness made this country great.

"In the past few weeks we have seen what happens when politics and indifference supercede compassion and organization."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091505Q.shtml

Comparing Katrina: The 1906 San Fran Quake

From Daily KOS:

"San Francisco, April 18, 1906.
The earthquake struck at 5:13 AM.
By 7 AM federal troops had reported to the mayor.
By 8 AM they were patrolling the entire downtown area and searching for survivors.
The second quake struck at 8:14 AM.
By 10:05 AM the USS Chicago was on its way from San Diego to San Francisco; by 10:30 the USS Preble had landed a medical team and set up an emergency hospital.
By 11 AM large parts of the city were on fire; troops continued to arrive throughout the day, evacuating people from the areas threatened by fire to emergency shelters and Golden Gate Park.
St. Mary's hospital was destroyed by the fire at 1 PM, with no loss of life, the staff and patients having already been evacuated across the bay to Oakland.
By 3 PM troops had shot several looters, and dynamited buildings to make a firebreak; by five they had buried dozens of corpses, the morgue and the police pistol range being unable to hold any more.
At 8:40 PM General Funston requested emergency housing - tents and shelters - from the War Department in Washington; all of the tents in the U.S. Army were on their way to San Francisco by 4:55 AM the next morning.
Prisoners were evacuated to Alcatraz, and by April 20 (two days after the earthquake) the USS Chicago had reached San Francisco, where it evacuated 20,000 refugees.
Of course, the technology of the day was fairly primitive, and the U.S. was a much poorer country. No doubt we could move more quickly today."

More on this to come. I heard a report earlier today, for example, that Congress met the following morning to
deal with the 1906 disaster. Of course, our representatives move more quickly today. . .

Quote Of The Decade: Neo Creed

Bob Bauer's Poem On Roberts Hearing

Must the Court bless smut and other such vices?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
May a President jail any and all in a crisis?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
Will the Court defer or will it despise us?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
Is privacy protected in all shapes and sizes?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
Are your views like Bob Bork’s or more like Brandeis’?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
Will you ever say anything at all to surprise us?
I can’t say much but: stare decisis!
Do you still favor term limits—a time when you’ll go?
No.

Dean Urges Grass-Roots Support For Freddy Ferrer

He notes that Bloomberg was bush's largest individual contributor and that he can finance his own campaign to the tune of $100M.

"And the problems facing New Yorkers aren't the only reason to support Freddy Ferrer. The New York City mayor's race is one of the most high-profile elections in the country in 2005. Pundits and political operatives are watching this race to gauge whether we are ready to take on the Republicans in 2006. I urge you to help show them that we are."

Here's the link to Freddy's site:

https://www.istandfor.com/main.cfm?actionId=globalShowStaticContent&screenKey=engUserContribution&s=ferrer

In This Photograph Of A Vatican Fag Squad Invading A DC Seminary, John Roberts Is Seen Prominent On Dais, Reciting Charges Against Young Seminarian Who Bent Over To Pick Up A Spilled French Fry

Roberts: A Summary Of The Cons And One Pro

OK, here goes. Having watched the hearings this week, the oge offers a lay summation. Roberts should be voted down because he lacks experience on the bench. I don't care where you stand politically; tell me why we should put anyone on the Supreme Court who has only two years experience as a judge. Lawyering is not judicial experience. Tell the kid to come back in 5 or 10 years. Really.

If you want to go by his experience on the bench, you have to get around Hamdan, which I can't. Aside from legalistic quibbling, the mere appearance of this colossal conflict of interest should have persuaded him to recuse himself. I can't get around it.

His finest moment: telling Schumer plain and to his face this morning, "I am not an ideologue," and repeating a belief that ideologues do not belong on the court. I felt he was convincing, and I suspect most of the panel did too. Of course, I also think he is an uptight, isolated, and undeveloped personality with buggy eyes, so he may be an ideologue and actually believe he is not, which is even worse. Most obvious character flaw: like bush, he cannot admit mistakes. . .uh oh. Yeah, and I would feel better about him if he looked like he'd had sex in the past 20 years.

Best bet: a traditional conservative who will rule too narrowly, frustrating both neos and liberals in a number of cases, but getting it just right once in a while. 65% probability.

Worst case scenario: a deceitful reptilian neo who truly believes that the legislation of the last 75 years is constitutionally unsound and needs to be undone at all costs. 15% probability.

Tell the kid to come back in 5 or 10 years. And that's it for the oge on the Roberts hearings, barring any explosive new develoments.

Dershowitz On Roberts: Will Tear Down Wall Between Church And State

Dershowitz---whose wiring sometimes does get tangled---just made the charge this morning on a TV interview, without explication. Stay tuned.

Roberts' Deficiencies in Analysis, Cntd.

This morning Leahy questioned Roberts on a number of cases in which he functioned to limit citizen access to courts where contract parties, states, or units of the federal government were charged with violations of federal law.

Roberts repeated his position that central to his thinking in these cases was a determination whether Congress intended access to the courts by private parties or remedy by the concerned federal parties. He lectured the panel that a simple inclusion in the legislation itself of a provision for legal remedy would obviate the problem and speculated what prompted such omissions---political compromise, negligence, or deliberation.

Leahy asked simply why Roberts would not assume that Congress expected its laws to be followed.

The point of course is that a reasonable person would assume a broader opportunity for redress, not narrower. When in doubt, err on the side of caution; give the little guy his day in court. But then, Roberts is a reasoning person more than he is a reasonable one.

One of Vatican's New Fag Squads Invades Seminary 

New Vatican Witch Hunt For Gays

Yeah, that'll fix it. Rooting out the gays should decimate the priestly ranks by what, 50%? And anyway, why go against 2000 years of tradition?

"Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for 'evidence of homosexuality' and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, according to a document prepared to guide the process."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/15/national/15seminary.html?th&emc=th

How long's it been since the last reformation?

Our Health Care Non-System: New Numbers

Unreal, like so many things these days:

"The average cost of health insurance for a family of four has soared past $10,800 — exceeding the annual income of a minimum-wage earner, according to a survey released Wednesday."

Uh, what's that leave for rent?

"For some, this year's survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research Educational Trust was the latest sign that a relentless rise in premiums threatens to collapse the central pillar of America's health insurance system: job-based health coverage. Since 2000, premiums have gone up 73%, while wages have grown 15%, Kaiser researchers concluded."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nuinsure15sep15,0,5497010.story?track=tottext

A Reminder: Non-Human John Roberts

This grimacing caricature of a judge may well get through because his situation is eclipsed by far greater horrors of the moment, but if Hamdan doesn't persuade you of his corruption, then this should persuade you of his manifest stupidity (or call it lack of perspective, or inhumanity, or absurdity...)

"...on the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, he ruled significantly in a 2004 case, Hedgepeth ex rel. Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. As you consider his conception of justice, would you confirm John Roberts as chief justice of the United States, now that he has been nominated by Bush?

"The facts of the case are detailed by constitutionalist John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which helped provide a lawyer to the mother of the plaintiff: 'On October 23, 2000, 12-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth . . . arrived at a Washington, D.C., Metro station to catch the train home.' She put one of the french fries she'd bought in her mouth.

"'Immediately, a police officer demanded she put down her french fries and remove her backpack. Although Ansche never resisted or failed to cooperate with the officer, she was told to place her hands behind her back and she was handcuffed.' Ansche was informed she had broken the law against eating in a subway station, and her shoestrings were removed by a policeman, who searched her.

"'Led to a police car' she was 'taken to the police station, where she was interrogated, booked, fingerprinted and finally released into her mother's custody after being detained for several hours.'

"The likely future chief justice John Roberts ruled for a unanimous three-judge panel that Ansche's Fourth Amendment and equal-protection rights had not been violated. Ansche's mother has pointed out that if an adult had committed the same crime, he or she would have been issued an appearance ticket—not treated like a dangerous felon.

"Here is what Judge Roberts said in his decision: 'No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation.' Indeed, he added, this 12-year-old girl 'was transported in the windowless rear compartment of a police vehicle to a juvenile processing center. . . . The child was frightened, embarrassed and crying throughout the ordeal.'

"However, righteously said John Roberts, revealing the core of his humanity under his black robe: '[The arrest advanced] the legitimate goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts.'"

Nitwit. Shallow, pompous, uptight, ignorant nitwit. Yeah, put him on the bench. We need judgements like his.

How The Idiots Screwed It Up

Newsweek details the step-by-step transmission of information and the points of awareness among the nitwit and his gang of cowards, idiots, sociopaths, and incompetents during the first week of Katrina. It is an infuriating little saga that will make you cry out in frustration and disgust.

There is of course only one urgent issue in the nation at large, the impeachment of this wretched little fraud. Is it that the congress has too much blood on its hands, or is the horror of the national landscape so overwhelming that our elected officials hide among the various separate issues?

"Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president.. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation... The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed."

And so the slow march of insanity, oblivion, and stupidity began.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287434

Robert Byrd's Speech

Yesterday:

..."the 'powers that be' refuse to actually budget for Iraq, so that a total picture of our fiscal situation is deliberately obscured. We are driving our country ever deeper into debt, and stretching every resource we possess to the breaking point. Prudence demands that we reassess our posture. Our inept and pathetic response to Katrina has underlined our vulnerabilities and writ them large before the world. The American people deserve better than this.

"... we cannot long remain a world power if we continue to let America crumble from within. The alarm bells are sounding and we must answer the call. This is no time to play for partisan advantage. This is certainly not the season to circle the wagons and hunker down. We need not stretch our brains to write new talking points or invent new excuses. And please, oh please, let us not resort to the trusty bureaucratic ruse of simply reorganizing government agencies once again..."

http://www.byrd2006.com/news/news.cfm?ID=9

New Horror: Doctors Killed Hopeless Patients

I had to go to the foreign press for this one:

"Doctors working in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans killed critically ill patients rather than leaving them to die in agony as they evacuated hospitals, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

"With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.

"In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=361980

"Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana, and The Mail on Sunday is protecting the identities of the medical staff concerned to prevent them being made scapegoats for the events of last week.

"Their families believe their confessions are an indictment of the appalling failure of American authorities to help those in desperate need after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, claiming thousands of lives and making 500,000 homeless."

Thank god bush is taking responsibility.

9/11 Commission Report, Latest Version

Hold onto your hats, this is a real shocker, duh.

"WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could 'seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark,' according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses."

Link below or wait for next version.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html

Awfullest Compound Word Of The Day

I am sure some languages could handle it, but not English:

"In a strange reversal, astronomers have detected a massive black hole but can find no traces of the surrounding galaxy that should be feeding it.

"At the center of most large galaxies, our own Milky Way included, are extremely dense black holes that have masses hundreds of millions times that of the Sun...

"To maintain their fierce brightness, however, quasars must feed off the very galaxies they live within. That is why the discovery of a galaxy-less quasar is so surprising."

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050914_homeless_quasar.html

"Galaxy-less?"

 

Citizens Tribunal On Iraq Begins Sunday In Binghamton: St. Patricks Four

Schedule of events for the first two days:

Sunday, September 18: "The Voices of Faith: Festival of Hope"

2:00 PM, Mass with Fr. Simon Harak, SJ of the War Resisters League.
3:30 PM, Community Circle.
5:00 PM, Dinner and traditional music by Traonach.
5:45 - 7:30 PM, Opening ceremony, with "Three Women's Voices of Faith," Cathy Breen, and a prayerful welcome by the St. Patrick's Four.
7:30 - 9 PM, Music and friendship.

Monday, September 19: "The Voices of Diplomacy"

Opening Remarks and Moderation by James Petras, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at SUNY-Binghamton. He is the author and editor of over 60 books, including the acclaimed Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century. His work has been translated into 26 languages. Petras was a member of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal Against Repression in Latin America.

Ray McGovern, served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.

Ann Wright resigned from the U.S. Foreign Service on March 19, 2003 to protest the invasion of Iraq, which was a violation of the United Nations charter. Ms. Wright joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and has served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Mongolia, and briefly in Afghanistan. Before entering the Foreign Service, she served in the Army and has a combined regular Army/Army Reserve service time of 29 years.

http://www.stpatricksfour.org/tribunal.php

Louisiana Then 

KATRINA, THE PUNITIVE EFFECT, AND A FACT

As the nation struggles to deal with the meaning of the disaster, there inevitably arises an unpleasant group of voices which seek to represent the victims as somehow responsible for their plight. Blameworthy public officials often play into this in efforts both deliberate and incidental, to save their own miserable hides. The oblivious media go along for the ride, all over the board, responding to and echoing the sound and fury. In other cases, average citizens find vent for their own biases and prejudices, imputing to the victims profiles and characterizations largely unfair, unwarranted, and erroneous.

In the present case, the majority of the victims were poor, huddled in neighborhoods most prone to flooding; the majority of the city was black. The mean cynic can ask, Why would they live there? They knew the danger. Explanations that these were the service workers who supported tourism and the wealthy few, too poor and invisible to accomplish much more than their day to day subsistence, hardly satisfies our cynic, who in any case sees the poor not as the menial workers comprising the base of society but as parasites on it, and believes in the stereotype of the spawning welfare mother rather than acknowledging the dozen piece-workers who labor behind her.

Here, however, is a single fact which could inform our cynic, explaining how, in following the lifestyles of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, the huddled poor could finally and suddenly confront a transformed world which no longer cradled but killed them:

"New Orleans once had miles of wetlands and barrier islands between it and the Gulf of Mexico to protect it from hurricanes. Scientists tell us that every mile of wetlands and marshes between the gulf and terra firma absorbs wind energy and reduces hurricane storm surges by one foot.

"And yet, since 1930, over a million acres of wetlands have disappeared from the Mississippi River Delta, and they are still washing away. Great engineering works built for ships and flood control diverted the river's replenishing sediment and freshwater away from the wetlands. Unless some part of the flow of the Mississippi River is directed back into the wetlands to rebuild them, hurricane threats will become more and more dangerous.

"Small projects to restore these wetlands have moved forward for fifteen years. But despite warnings by scientists that hurricanes could now destroy New Orleans, the restoration effort has moved slowly and with few funds."

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentID=4752

So once again the twin agents of corrupt government and commercial greed neglected the effects of the very reality they created, and the people they exploited were the first victims of inevitable disaster. Lest we be too smug in the perceived security of our middle-class advantage, however, consider that the same social forces over the same period of time generally have scattered us over an expansive system of congested highways and suburbs, navigable only by automobile, affording shelter in impractical frame housing fundamentally undeveloped in two centuries, the heating of which, like the fueling of our cars, undeveloped in a century, is largely dependent upon a single, nonrenewable resource, oil, notwithstanding which we no more view ourselves as the products and potential victims of a vast, intergenerational program of politico-economic engineering and exploitation than did the coastal residents of New Orleans.

Consider that the effects of the loss of that resource would be little different from those of the loss of Louisiana's protective wetlands.

Dear friends and family, there are natural disasters, man-made disasters, and man-made natural disasters.

And Now

More On Hamdan and Roberts

Let's hear more about this, and let's keep it in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It came up yesterday, but he got an easy pass.

"JUST FOUR DAYS before the Bush administration named John G. Roberts Jr. to fill retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the District of Columbia federal appeals court decided a case called Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld. In a crucial victory for the administration, the court upheld President Bush's creation of special military tribunals for trials of alleged terrorists and denied them the protection of the Geneva Convention. Roberts was one of the judges who decided that case, but he should have recused himself."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lubet13sep13,0,1515736.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

And while I'm on Roberts, a couple observations. Truth-telling and affect: Roberts generally speaks clearly and without pauses when he is reciting a memorized passage (as in his opening remarks, which were frankly simple-minded slices of pie, featuring a hackneyed image about distant horizons and a great comic analogy with umpiring) or relating a familiar text. When, on the other hand, he is taken by surprise or is deliberately obfuscating, he uses a lot of umm's and ahh's, far too many for a polished speaker; these elementary particles should have been removed from his speech years ago. The oge cannot understand why not. The average small-town TV newsperson has been trained beyond this level. And I still cannot get beyond the crocodilian eyes.

His logic and intelligence: not so formidable as his advocates pretend. During his reply to a question about the influence of foreign courts on American judicial thinking, he fell back on a democratic crux, that, for example, a German judge is not appointed by an executive and legislative answerable to the American people; what he failed to include, however, was that the American executive and legislative who deal with the German judge are answerable. By his simplistic logic, which frankly was just a political sop, we could not invest any authority in any foreign entity and all treaties would be unenforceable.

Delta and Northwest On Verge Of Filing Bankruptcy

United and US Air are already operating under bankruptcy protection, and seem to like it fine. No wonder. All the benefits of a socialist scenario for their execs and none for the taxpayer. I get tired of writing on the absurdity of state support for failed corporations in this "industry."

"NEW YORK - Both Delta and Northwest airlines may file for bankruptcy today as rising fuel costs and pressure from discount fares continue to cripple the major airlines."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12637353.htm

Why Not Chertoff?

A stupid little guy named Brown took the fall, no innocent, to be sure, but a mere patsy for the goons of power above him. Will the facts of hierarchal authority indict Chertoff? The little idiot in the white house?

"WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his relief duties and resigned, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

"Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies to act without requests from state or local officials. Former FEMA director Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff named him the 'principal federal official' in charge...

"White House and homeland security officials would not explain why Chertoff waited about 36 hours to declare Katrina an Incident of National Significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours."

Bush, of course, was on vacation and then the West Coast hyping his dirty little war.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/12638168.htm

He Accepted Responsibility 

"I Take Responsibility"

So fall on your sword already. I am sick of hearing every incompetent or corrupt pol who gets caught with his hand in the till, his pants down in the wrong bedroom, or on the wrong side of an issue, say, "I take responsibility." What he is really saying is, "I deserve another shot." Wrong. In most cases they have demonstrated incapacity for office. Theirs is the transient embarassment of a spoiled brat discovered at the cookie jar. This idiot who inherited the white house has no sense of responsibility because he is coming from a position of privilege. Privilege and responsibility are antithetical. This fraud has never earned anything through honest labor or merit.

Unfortunately, coming as a reversal two weeks after the anticipated disaster and four years after 9/11, following the investment of billions of taxpayer dollars in a manifestly ineffective defense program, this expression of mock contrition represents a cold, calculated strategy to minimize political damage and posture his adminstration in the best light. It, like the braindamaged potus, is fraudulent.

"'Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility,' Mr. Bush said in an appearance in the East Room with President Jalal Talabani of Iraq. 'I want to know what went right and what went wrong.'"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/national/nationalspecial/14bush.html?th&emc=th

He did not say he made mistakes. He did not say he was sorry.

Worst Joke Of The Day/ Worst Puns Of The Day

Thanks to M for this one:

Q: What is George W. Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

Duct Tape Guy Named Acting FEMA Head

You betcha.

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Monday named David Paulison, a top official in the Homeland Security Department, to replace Michael Brown on an acting basis as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/12/AR2005091201222.html

Too bad they didn't use it on the levees.

"Factories in North Carolina and Kentucky shifted into high gear Wednesday to try to meet the sudden demand spike after U.S. Fire Administrator David Paulison's statements earlier this week that Americans should buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to be prepared to protect themselves and their homes in the event of a biological, chemical or radiological attack."

http://money.cnn.com/2003/02/12/news/companies/ducttape/

What I don't need to hear is that he had stock in it.

Georgia Is Known For The Unusual Design Of Its Ballots 

Southern Hospitality: Georgia's Poll Tax On Poor

This state of affairs may appear technically legal, but its obvious effect stinks.

"In 1966, the Supreme Court held that the poll tax was unconstitutional. Nearly 40 years later, Georgia is still charging people to vote, this time with a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses - a group that is disproportionately poor, black and elderly - to pay $20 or more for a state ID card. Georgia went ahead with this even though there is not a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The law is a national disgrace."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/opinion/12mon1.html?th&emc=th

Capitalism At Work: Oracle's Ellison Offers Deal

Before you get overwhelmed by this sleazebag's generosity, consider that $100M amounts to 1/137th of his net worth. Right. In the neo nation there is a billionaire sliming under every stone.

"Lawrence J. Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, has reached a tentative agreement under which he would pay $100 million to charity to resolve a lawsuit charging that he engaged in insider trading in 2001, a lawyer involved in the case said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/12/technology/12oracle.html?th&emc=th

Link To Impeach Bush

Courtesy D:

http://impeachbush.org/

Suspicious Of Big Charity?

Naomi Klein discusses the likelihood of the gentrification of New New Orleans and the politics of charity. Frankly, in the neo nation the only thing the poor or the middle class get is poorer. Only a fool or a saint would expect their lot to better after Katrina. If you feel the need to help but are suspicious of what happens to your money as it is directed or controlled by mainstream charities, she recommends you check out:

"...the Vanguard Public Foundation, 383 Rhode Island St., Suite 301, San Francisco, CA 94103. Checks should be earmarked 'People's Hurricane Fund.'"

Frankly again, the oge has absolutely no basis to argue that the refugees are in any position to optimize the use of donations either, but at least it would be their decisions, or their leaders' decisions, or their leaders' advisers' decisions. . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0909-27.htm

Hessians Heading For New Orleans 

One More Time: Mercenaries Patrol New Orleans

Just to be clear: mercenaries are patrolling the streets of an American city. Just to be clear: where are the media? Just to be clear: who hires mercenaries? Does anyone remember the Hessians?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/1/222637/6400

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1567656,00.html

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Blackwater_Mercenaries_Used_in_New_Orleans

Moyers Some More On the Christian Rechtig

From his address to Union Theological this month:

"'The alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their "separate realities" or to wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest.'

"That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian right was setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he (Marvin Harris) warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.

"It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they're talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them - the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America 'a safe haven for the cause of conscience.'"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105X.shtml

Call For Impeachment Now

Katrina is the final event. There is no reason to grant this profoundly corrupt and incompetent adminstration another day in its rampant assault on the Republic and her people. Contact your representative now to move for Impeachment. Use the word. Spread the word. Inculcate the media.

The oge's letter to his Congressional representative:

"We are appalled not only by the horror of Katrina and the nation's failed response, but by the reluctance of a timid Congress now to advance the only conscionable response to a corrupt and incompetent administration that has allowed if not facilitated the deaths of hundreds more of Americans: Impeachment of George Bush.
What is Congress waiting for? Even now, his administration is exploiting the disaster, awarding contracts to politically-connected firms. It is a terrifying fact that Blackwater mercenaries are patroling the streets of an American city.

"We urge you to speak out on these matters and support your colleagues in the House in moving for Impeachment."

Minuteman Test Launch. . . 

Update On bush Proposal Of Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strikes

You've been waiting for this one with all the anticipation of Elvira at a witch hunt. In the neo nation everything and nothing are absurd. Thanks to D for the article reference:

"The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001053_pf.html

Ongoing Assault On American Democracy:Mercenaries Patrol New Orleans

Just when you thought the outrages of a despotic administration could not get worse:

"New Orleans - Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been "deputized" by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte...

"The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor's office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been 'deputized' by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. 'Y'all know where the Blackwater guys are?' they asked. One of the police officers responded, 'There are a bunch of them around here,' and pointed down the road."

Yeah, down the road all right.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091005A.shtml

Ongoing Assault On The Constitution

The courts get more outrageous by the day. Someone please explain to me why the government shouldn't be required to charge this guy. I suspect he's scum, I suspect he meant us harm, but why can't he be charged? And given this disastrous judicial collusion with vested power, why would anyone support more of it? Deny Roberts a seat on the SCOTUS. We need a true liberal or a true conservative.

"A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks."

No. No. No. What wartime? There are no foreign troops on our shores. We haven't had a terrorist attack in four years, a period longer than our involvement in WW II.

"The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago in 2002 and a month later designated an 'enemy combatant' by President Bush. The government contends that Padilla trained at al Qaeda camps and was planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. Padilla has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case has ignited a fierce battle over the balance between civil liberties and the government's power to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A host of civil liberties groups and former attorney general Janet Reno weighed in on Padilla's behalf, calling his detention illegal and arguing that the president does not have unchecked power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely."

This is one of the few instances where the oge is in agreement with incompetent criminal Janet Reno, whose own hands are still dripping blood from killing Americans she sanctioned at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090900772.html?referrer=email

 

Tierney On Bureaucracy

One more time: just because bureaucracies aren't working, does not mean we need more of them. Got it, slop-jowl Lieberman? Stop wasting money and resources. We don't and never did need a whole new Department of Homeland Security anymore than we need an intelligence czar. What we mostly need is to de-politicize the working ranks of the agencies we already have and let the pros do their jobs. Oh, yeah, and a little real work from the congress, instead of self-serving pieties, would help. I really don't care about your personal faith, how much you got, or what you do with it other than keeping it out of my face and my government.

"Suppose, for instance, investigators try to find out who had the brilliant idea of putting the Federal Emergency Management Agency inside a new department with an organizational chart modeled on the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture and Food Economy. One Democrat, Hillary Clinton, did question whether FEMA would suffer, but the idea was originally championed by her colleagues, particularly Joe Lieberman.

"Mr. Lieberman joined Mrs. Clinton this week in calling for a "re-examination" of FEMA's status, but he was against independence before he was for it. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he helped lead the charge to create the Department of Homeland Security."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/opinion/10tierney.html?th&emc=th

War On The Middle Class: It Just Gets Worse

This you will not believe. The obscene little idiot who inherited the white house just doesn't get it. He actually thinks he has an excuse to cut salaries because we have a disaster to fix. Unreal.

"On Thursday, President Bush issued a proclamation suspending the law that requires employers to pay the locally prevailing wage to construction workers on federally financed projects. The suspension applies to parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

"By any standard of human decency, condemning many already poor and now bereft people to subpar wages - thus perpetuating their poverty - is unacceptable. It is also bad for the economy. Without the law, called the Davis-Bacon Act, contractors will be able to pay less, but they'll also get less, as lower wages invariably mean lower productivity.

"The ostensible rationale for suspending the law is to reduce taxpayers' costs. Does Mr. Bush really believe it is the will of the American people to deny the prevailing wage to construction workers in New Orleans, Biloxi and other hard-hit areas? Besides, the proclamation doesn't require contractors to pass on the savings they will get by cutting wages from current low levels. Around New Orleans, the prevailing hourly wage for a truck driver working on a levee is $9.04; for an electrician, it's $14.30."

Is there no end to his mischief? Let him and the nasty-tongued bitch who plagued the earth with her misbegotten whelp bust their guts in that cesspool for $9 an hour.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/opinion/10sat2.html?th&emc=th

Picture Of The Day: Ad To Promote Art Conservation

"Without Your Help, Italy Could Lose Something."

Link to Leahy's Petition on Roberts Nomination

http://tools.democracyforamerica.com/petition/norubberstamps/

Thinking About Survival

This is a pretty dumb article in a lot of respects, but it contains some good advice.

"...dehydration is a very real and life-threatening danger after a calamity. Though you drink half a gallon of water a day, you should store one gallon of water per person per day. Assume you will be cut off for at least three days and store as much extra as you have room for in a cool, dark space. The International Bottled Water Association says jugs of water can be kept indefinitely, though they may pick up an off-flavor from the plastic after a year or so. But it is pretty easy to rotate the stock every couple of months since many people drink bottled water...

"If you have the room, store some of the water in the freezer. When the electricity goes, you'll have more ice to preserve the food in the refrigerator for a day or two longer.

"If worse comes to worse and you run out of water while your community's water supply is contaminated, turn off the water supply to your house and drain water from your water heater or scoop it from the toilet tank. It must be purified by boiling it for several minutes or by mixing in two drops of old-fashioned bleach - not the "mountain fresh" scented varieties - to each quart of water."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/business/10prepare.ready.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Monster Killen Back In Jail

So they caught the filthy little lizard lying about his poor health, up and walking; the wonder is that this shining son of the south managed to stay out this long. Again, the irony here is that the braindamaged judge did the right thing for the wrong reason.

"A judge sent Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klansman convicted of the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, back to prison yesterday, saying Mr. Killen had deceived the court about his health when he asked to be released on bond.

"The hearing was called after Mr. Killen, who was granted bail after testifying that he was confined to a wheelchair, was seen up and walking by sheriff's deputies."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/10killen.html?th&emc=th

FDA Scientists Documenting Effects of Morning-After Pill 

Another Defection From The bush Adminstration

Joining the ranks of O'Neil and Whitman---albeit with considerably more volume---Wood has quit:

"WASHINGTON - The highly regarded women's health chief at the Food and Drug Administration resigned Wednesday in protest of her agency's refusal to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.

"Assistant Commissioner Susan Wood charged that FDA's leader overruled his own scientists' determination that the morning-after pill could safely be sold without a prescription, and stunned his employees last week by instead postponing indefinitely a decision on whether to let that happen."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050831/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/morning_after_pill

Hey, what's a little science when you got family values?

Too Little Too Late: Powell Has Regrets. Duh.

What is a whore with regrets, half a whore?

"Asked further how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Mr. Powell said, 'Terrible.' He added that it was 'devastating' to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.

"Mr. Powell also implied in the interview that the United States did not go to war in Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient Iraqi forces to help stabilize the country."

Well, at least this pathetic, shambling embodiment of cowardice and hypocrisy, which he calls loyalty, acknowledges his role as a patsy, if not that of facilitator. Why is the spectacle of imperfect honesty just as repugnant as unabashed deceit? He may have felt devastated, but not so much as the dead and maimed wretches who are the consequences of his actions and inactions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/politics/09powell.html?th&emc=th

 

"MORTUI VIVIS PRAECIPANT"

"They have turned a gigantic warehouse into a makeshift morgue in the Louisiana town of St. Gabriel. Doctors and forensic specialists wait there for the bodies to come in, bodies with no identification, bodies that have spent days submerged in water, bodies gnawed by dogs and rats and 'gators. The doctors have posted a hand-lettered sign on the wall: 'Mortui Vivis Praecipant.' It means, 'Let the dead teach the living.'"

This is not a good hour for the oge. Thanks (?) to J's referral to a splendid Czech internet station, Faure's Requiem, so poignant one can barely handle it during good times, has been playing while I read Cindy Sheehan's movingly authentic piece, followed by Pitt's essay on the reporting of Anne Gervasi on the victims of the Gulf Coast (our Gulf), a piece in which he begins to sketch the almost inconceivable scale of the current disaster.

"'The trauma they are experiencing,' continued Gervasi, 'is so profound that we have no cultural term or machinery set up for it. The dead and nameless bodies by the thousands rotting in the water, arriving dead on the buses with them, or dying next to them in the shelters, are a huge festering wound that no one dares mention. This is a true Diaspora the likes of which we haven't seen since Reconstruction. The immediate needs that are being addressed ignore the greater traumas yet to be spoken...

"'No system can sustain itself as a viable entity when the citizenry are the walking wounded. Victims implode a system from within and expose its decay. This is the beginning of the end unless we can get a drastic change...'

"What have the dead taught the living? Responsible and effective government matters. At this moment, we have neither. We are, simply put, on our own."

And beyond this, I get glimpses of further threats, economic collapses and systems---energy, transportation, and communications---that stop working, because their blood already has been sucked dry and their roots poisoned by the mischief of the most dangerous and incompetent administration in the history of the Republic.

This USA, this great ship of state, the product of the industry and sacrifice of millions, over two centuries, wrought from the virgin bounty of the most magnificently endowed continent on the planet, is helmed, through some evil miscarriage of public trust, by a fraudulent little creature of crippled intellect, barely capable of coherent speech or gesture, badly patched together of filched identities because he has none of his own---a literally soulless amoralist, a sociopath incapable of normal emotion or conscience, who can only parody, through trial and error, the sense of right and wrong which we take for granted in ourselves---and inwardly haunted by a cowardly cacophony of fear, confusion, and worthlessness. His cabal of corrupt, greedy predators can no longer control the little monster of their creation, cajoled only by indulgence and sycophancy, and in his decline---when the piteously artificial shell of his personal refuge decays in whimpers or shrieks---they will try to hide him away, more carefully but as surely as their administration hides their present victims, in flag-draped coffins and dripping plastic bags. Grant us a safe harbor in sight that day.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805Y.shtml

IFC Airs "WMD" Sunday AT 10PM

It's the Schechter film, and the D doesn't stand for destruction. Incidentally, you might find IFC's website rather interesting at the moment, as the captain editorializes:

http://ifcblog.ifctv.com/evan/2005/09/trust_no_one.html

"Plum Blossoms," A 1948 Matisse Anonymously Withheld From Public For 35 Years, Donated To MOMA 

Quote Of the Day

"Now oceans of blood - both Iraqi and American - have been spilled for ruinous and disturbing policies of very bad people in our government who have based their reasons for invasion and occupation on their twisted imaginations and their seemingly bottomless lust for power, profits, chaos and confusion."

---Cindy Sheehan, What Kind of Extremist Will You Be?

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805K.shtml

I admit it. Until now I have avoided references to Ms. Sheehan, half convinced that she is a media creation of the left. After seeing her interviewed on TV, however, I have to acknowledge that she comes across as one of the most honest, lucid, and convincing personae I have encountered in years. If she is not real, I want her to be. I am won over. What could be simpler---and closest to the truth---than that our government has been captured by "very bad people?"

Big Brother's Hand In The Stock Market---Literally

You are warned: This is another horror show, of potentially huge dimensions, given that a corrupt and flawed ideology supports it, one which by its own destructive nature leads only to ruin.

If I had encountered this anywhere except in a report by a reputable Canadian investment management firm, I would likely dismiss it as conspiratorial. In the new reality of the neo nation, however, where we generally have been abandoned by the media, which are either too afraid, greedy, or incompetent to cover relevant issues, I day by day have to increase the level of my personal skepticism and am increasingly driven to the foreign sources. OK, here it is, soberly but alarmingly written, with an underlying message that the neos have penetrated the workings of Wall Street; your own imagination can supply the answer, to whose advantage? Eliot Spitzer, where are you in our hour of need? Read on, with a change of underwear at hand.

Below are supplied extracts from and the link to an article about the report, followed by a link to the text of the report itself.

"'Given the available information, we do not believe there can be any doubt that the U.S. government has intervened to support the stock market. Too much credible information exists to deny this. Yet virtually no one ever mentions government intervention publicly, preferring instead to pretend as if such activities have never taken place and never would.

"'It is time that market participants, the media and, most of all, the government acknowledge what should be blatantly obvious to anyone who reviews the public record on the matter: These markets have been interfered with on numerous occasions. Our primary concern is that what apparently started as a stopgap measure may have morphed into a serious moral hazard situation, with market manipulation an endemic feature of the U.S. stock market.

"'We have not taken a position on the wisdom of intervention in this paper, largely because exceptional circumstances could argue for it. In many respects, for instance, the apparent rescue after the 1987 crash and the planned intervention in the wake of September 11 were very defensible. Administered in extremely small doses and with the most stringent safeguards and transparency, market stabilization could be justified.

'"But a policy enacted in secret and knowingly withheld from the body politic has created a huge disconnect between those knowledgeable about such activities and the majority of the public, who have no clue whatsoever.

'"There can be no doubt that the firms responsible for implementing government interventions enjoy an enviable position unavailable to other investors..."

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050906/65371.html

The link to the Sprott report:

http://gata.org/SprottReportTheVisibleHand.pdf

More On Hamdan And Roberts

The overriding fear for many in this case is the shift of enormous power to the Executive, contrary to what seems to many of us clear Constitutional intent. As the enormous destructiveness of the present incumbent continues to drive home, the last thing the Republic needs is more of the same. It is a hallmark of empire that the tyranny of an executive increases incrementally as civil protections are ceded. Stop Roberts; there is nothing conservative about a traitor who has already granted a substantial measure of tyranny to the braindamaged little huckster who inherited the white house. And if you don't think such psychos can do any damage, consider Nero and Caligula.

"(Hamdan) vests the president with the ability to circumvent the federal courts and time-tested limits on the executive . . . . No decision, by any court, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks has gone this far.
Professor Katyal is not engaging in hyperbole.

"The Hamdan decision gave the president (and by precedent, his successors) the unreviewable power—outside the jurisdiction of civilian courts, and what have been up to now the due process protections of military courts—to strip U.S. detainees of the humane Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners...

"his legal reasoning in this decision reveals a great deal about his reverence for presidential powers and his willingness to validate a separate legal system on these issues that has been constructed since 9-11 by the president, Donald Rumsfeld, and attorneys general John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

"In these cases, I often consult an expert in constitutional law, appellate attorney Jonathan Freiman (also involved in this case), who is, in addition, a senior fellow at Yale Law School. He points out that in the Hamdan decision, John Roberts disregarded 'the plain text of the [Constitution's] Supremacy Clause . . . which unambiguously states: " . . . all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land."'

"Freiman emphasizes that Roberts joined this part of the opinion 'without reservation.' Moreover, Roberts and his colleagues bypassed the congressional habeas corpus statute."

http://villagevoice.com/news/0536,hentoff,67495,6.html

Courtesy J 

The Marie Antoinette Quote for the Ages

Just in case you didn't hear it, this is the Barbara Bush bungle:

"And so many of the people in the arena here were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them. What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article310798.ece

Hillary's Pick To Head FEMA

Help Me Understand This Thing about Kanye West

So he said the "b" word on live TV and criticized media coverage of blacks in the disaster (CNN also made the latter point when it showed two newspaper photos of people with looted groceries; only the photo of the black included "looted").

"Kanye West's impromptu attack on President Bush during a live telecast Friday prompted NBC to delete his remark in its West Coast broadcast of the benefit for hurricane victims. 'George Bush doesn't care about black people,' West said.

"The rap star also criticized coverage of the catastrophe. 'I hate the way they portray us in the media,' West said. 'If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food.' West's remarks aired unedited in NBC's East Coast and Midwestern markets, and also on the simulcast versions for MSNBC, CNBC and Pax. However, the network turned off his microphone and switched to another performer shortly after he mentioned Bush."

And get this, the explanation proffered by the NBC spokeswoman:

"'It would be most unfortunate if the efforts of the artists who participated and the millions of Americans who are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's personal opinion.'"

I have a problem with this kind of editing, because you don't know whether it was to protect the fundraising or NBC's image. Bleeping a four-letter word is one thing, but where do you draw the line when broadcasting a live event? At what point does the process of editing become or produce of itself a political message? Editing a news event or interview to the extent that it distorts the meaning is not accepted practice. In this instance, NBC changed the reality it was broadcasting. Pure entertainment is one thing, but this broadcast was more than that; it was a utilization of celebrities to raise money, an interactive process with social consequences.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-telethon4sep04,1,2045791.story

FEMA Flies Victims to Wrong Charleston

Hey, it could have been worse. It could have been an incoming ICBM they got wrong. For the story of the geo-challenged agency giving us so much for our tax dollars, courtesy D:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/06/katrina.charleston/index.html?section=cnn_latest

Link to Law Resources for Roberts

It's the Library of Congress selection:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/law/roberts.html

Link to Kerry Petition Against Further Tax Breaks

OK, it's Kerry, but at least he can deliver petitions.

http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/taxcuts.php

CAI: Another Verdict

An experienced teacher examines computer-assisted instruction and distinguishes between manipulating and engaging the world. What I am not sure he distinguishes in the process, however, is the real from the virtual: on a meaningful level, doesn't the normal child know he is only manipulating a virtual representation of reality? I keep coming back to the proposition that the pc is not fundamentally different in that respect from any other representational tool, including, primarily, the written or printed word which started it all (oh, hell, let's start with language and the conceptualizing brain). And yes, mothers had to chase bookworms outside to play as well, even before they understood it as "engaging the environment." Sometimes I think we confuse ourselves with nothing more than problems of degree.

"Technology can provide enormous assistance in figuring out how to do things, but it turns mute when it comes to determining what we should do. Without any such moral grounding, the dependence on computers encourages a manipulative, 'whatever works' attitude toward others. It also reinforces the exploitative relationship to the environment that has plagued Western society since Descartes first expressed his desire to 'seize nature by the throat.' Even sophisticated 'environmental' simulations, which show how ecosystems respond to changes, reinforce the mistaken idea that the natural world conforms to our abstract representations of it."

By the way, does anyone know the difference between exploitative and exploitive?

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-5om/Monke.html

Supreme Court Nominee Emerging From Natural Habitat 

Why America Cannot Afford John Roberts

The oge worked and lived through one of the nation's silliest periods of liberal excess, the NYC administration of John Lindsay. However noble the goals, his naively simplistic misapperception of human and social nature, as I recall abetted by the paternalistic theories of the Columbia School of Social Work, succeeded in aggravating divisions and resentments between the social classes, worsened the plight of the poor when his policy extravagances drew a backlash from the state legislature, threatened essential security, and edged the city toward bankruptcy. It was my first practical lesson in the need to control ideology in its application to political operations, and, oddly, even to this writer, untutored in the fine discipline of political science, apparent early in his administration and despite the nature of the times.

I was similarly disturbed by the implications of the S&L debacle. Although it was generally regarded at the time as a monumental instance of corrupt business practices, the oge felt something more sinister, despite lacking a vocabulary for the neocon mischief that was hatching. The momentum under the stupid little actor who has been treated far more kindly by recent history than he had any right to expect or deserve, slowed with some of his administration's major missteps, and crawled under Bush I and Clinton, but has exploded under bush ii to the great imperilment of the Republic.

My youthful lesson that mere ideology is an inadequate framework for public administration is reinforced day by day, as neocon fantasy catapults the nation through one crisis after another. The urgency now is that so much of our governmental operation has been transformed that we may in fact find ourselves on a runaway train to disaster, not just political, but economic and social. Why would the ideology that turned Iraq into an unintended landscape of bloody devastation, when it aimed for the opposite, spare our own homeland the consequences of its ill-founded theories and assumptions?

The oge does not subscribe to conspiratorial interpretations; what is more sobering, however, is his conviction that once forces are put into play, they may escape the control of their authors, were they even eager to recall them. bush and his cronies must be stopped now. They are no more related to responsible conservatism than Lindsay was to responsible liberalism.

Against this canvas, sketch the profile of John Roberts. Given the urgency of the moment, there is no room to gamble on the motives and allegiances of a supreme justice. That should be enough to resist his appointment.

The second reason is the mere fact that he is the chosen son of the neos, who stand now to any reasonable person as the enemies of the Republic.

The third reason is his record of lawyering, wherein he actively involved himself in the policies and politics of the manor lords setting the table for the neo feast. To debate these particulars, however, is distracting, so number four:

A mere two months ago, even as he was interviewing with bush on his nomination for the Supreme Court, he sat on the panel of the D.C. Circuit Court hearing the case of Hamdan, on the use of military tribunals at GITMO--- in which bush was a named defendant---and voted in the administration's favor. A breech of ethics of this magnitude would border on the criminal in some trial situations. His failure to recuse himself is indefensible and leads to the darkest suspicions, that his vote was a condition of nomination, or a gesture of obeisance to secure it. No one so carefully groomed in his career and so deliberate in his attentions could overlook the conflict of interest. It is that rare moment in a person's life which defines him, and it is on the ethical transgression of Hamdan that the Senate should focus its examination; let the weasle explain that one in the light of public scrutiny.

The nation cannot afford another neo ideologue or servitor dragging us into ruin. If Roberts is not one, he has behaved as one. That alone is more than sufficient reason to deny him confirmation.

Add your voice to those alerting your senators to the problem:

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=19554

The Case For Privatizing Flood Insurance

It seems to me that cheap ($400 per year per $100,000 of value), subsidized government flood insurance creates as many problems as it solves. Insuring long-standing residences in areas that have been compromised by failing infrastructure and neglect/abuse/deterioration of coastal protections, as in the case of New Orleans, is one thing, but subsidizing new vacation homes for the wealthy (maximum $350,000 including contents or 85% of replacement value, whichever is less) or for nonresidential structures (maximum $1 M) on known, fragile, flood-prone geography strikes me as counter-productive, and likely more the result of effective lobbying than wise public policy, although I have not researched its history.

So what is wrong with the notion that individuals or businesses who, from this point on, knowingly insist on building in compromised areas, do so at their own risk and dependent on private insurance, as available and at whatever premiums are warranted? Is there some reason unfathomable to the oge's modest intellect, that the average tax payer should subsidize discretionary construction in known, flood-prone areas? Over and over again?

There are some jobs that the private sector does best, and some for government. Why can't we get it straight?

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002474477_floodinsurance06.html

UFO Or FSM? 

Church of the FSM: Open Letter to Kansas School Board

Ok. Two of you have separately directed my attention to the Church of the FSM. That obviously requires an extended devotion of blog space. Thanks to Moosh and rl.

http://www.venganza.org/

Exploitation Of Health Care Costs Continues

Here is more evidence of how profiteering is destroying the delivery of health care:

"In California, San Francisco's largest hospital, the California Pacific Medical Center, is under scrutiny from the county's tax assessor who is investigating whether the hospital is ineligible for its property tax exemption. According to state data, the nonprofit hospital made massive profits in recent years -- with operating margins of over ten times those of average CA hospitals.

"In Oregon, the 'sticker price' for hospital care is more than twice as much as the actual cost of providing care -- and the hospitals with the highest mark-ups are without a single exception owned by out-of-state hospital corporations.

"The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation paid hospitals more than half a billion dollars more than it cost the hospitals to treat injured workers during the past seven years. In fact, records show payments to hospitals increased 80 percent between 1997 and 2003, though the number of injured workers dropped by nearly a third during the same period."

Do you want to know more?

http://ouroregonhospitals.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={7DA3164F-4973-4991-A077-C8AB8E6003EC}

Quote of Yesterday

"This has been an administration of death, disaster, fear and woe. The whole pack of them should be run out of Washington on a rail. Better yet, they should be air-dropped into the center of New Orleans and made to see and smell and touch and taste the newest disaster they have helped to create."
---William Rivers Pitt

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090205Z.shtml

Peak Oil, Peak Labor: The Eternal Class Struggle

Whether he is an anarcho-syndicalist or not, Dale Allan Pfeiffer offers his manifesto on the average American's alternative to emerging peak oil: peak labor. Prepare to be lectured, as when reading Wittgenstein. This is a dire scenario, folks, fraught with love and error.

"When the panic comes, it will be managed by the elite. They will extract their profits from it, and then they will liquidate their assets and move them offshore before the market crashes. They will fold up their tents and leave town, perhaps for the Cayman Islands, perhaps for safe havens in Asia and elsewhere. There they will convert their dollars to gold, or possibly to Chinese yuan, sparking a bottomless devaluation of the US dollar. And they will sit back in safety and comfort to watch the crash. Once the dust has settled, they will move back in—along with all the other vultures—to pick up what is left at pennies on the dollar."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/090205Pfeiffer/090205pfeiffer.html

Of course, as Katrina revealed a bit prematurely in pulling their covers, the elite are not perfect in disguising their mischief. This week's disclosures of how utterly the lower classes have been abandoned could prompt the workers clinging by grace of a single personal disaster to perceived middle-class status, to wonder about their own security.

Quote of the Day

"We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore."
---David Brooks, 09.04.05 NYTimes, not the oge's favorite editorialist by a long shot, and possessed of a lot of hare-brained ideas most of the time, including on this occasion, but voicing a sentiment which I hope is growing from sea to shining sea. . .

Russ Feingold in 2008?

They got to find somebody besides Loser Hillary. Thanks to the GOP domination of all three branches of government, plus a still-dysfunctional fourth estate, the little demon in the white house will likely survive what should be a mortal wound inflicted by Katrina. On the other hand, voter outrage, reinforced by gasoline and home heating rapes, should persist well into the next election cycle. If the Dems fail to shake off the failed ideology of the neolibs---the Clintons, Gore, Lieberman, Kerry, and countless disciples of the DLC---however, and summon up the guts, heart, and brains to reclaim and raise on high the banner of responsible liberalism (forget hiding behind this phony "progressive" label unless you truly want to resurrect that fascinating party's heritage), they will once more spiral down in political irrelevance and leave the future to a radical third party. I am still waiting for Dean here, folks. The time is now. Why is he silent?

In the meantime, check out R. Feingold:

"WASHINGTON - By issuing an early call for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops from
Iraq, Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record) could emerge as the Democrats' anti-war candidate of 2008, in the tradition of Eugene McCarthy and Howard Dean.

"Although Democrats have been critical of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, they have been reluctant to call for a timetable to leave, fearing it could reinforce stereotypes that their party is weak on national security."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050906/ap_on_el_ge/feingold_anti_war_candidate

Sweeney's Pro-CAFTA Vote

I have received Rep. Sweeney's rationalized response to my complaint about his CAFTA vote. It is amazing what an issue looks like on one side of a worn coin:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the Dominican Republic – Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). I agree this is an important issue. I certainlyappreciate you expressing your concerns and taking the time to understand the factors of my decision.On July 27, 2005, Congress voted on the CAFTA legislation (H.R. 3045). I votedin support of this trade agreement. Since 1999, New York’s exports to the CAFTA countries have increased by $231 million, a 76% increase. This region has emerged as New York’s 8th largest growing market worldwide. Now New York willbe able to continue to grow its export market in the Central American region. New York’s 20th Congressional District is the nation’s 32nd most rural district. The agriculture community, in particular, holds a strong presence in thisdistrict. This trade pact will have a positive effect on New York Agriculture. I have been contacted by New York farmers and over one hundred local companiesand organizations about CAFTA and its benefits to New York. For example, there is good news for New York’s 700 apple growers. The trade agreement immediatelyeliminates extremely stiff tariffs of 25% that are placed on U.S. applesexported to Central America. The New York Apple Association expects exports oftheir apples to rise as much as $1.5 million per year. As the nation’s 5th largest producer of apples, New York apple exporters can now access more than 35million consumers in an open and free market, and compete on an equal playingfield with Chile, a major apple exporting country in the region.This pact will open markets for American goods, create jobs in New York, whilealso increasing the economic stability of our neighbors and improving ournational security. For 20 years, the CAFTA countries have been importing their products duty free. Now this agreement levels the playing field for all NewYork manufacturers, farmers and companies by allowing our products into CAFTAcountries duty free, eliminating tariffs on 80% of U.S. exports immediately, andon all tariffs within ten years. Local businesses will also benefit from the implementation of CAFTA. Forexample, Adirondack Plastics and Paper Recycling in Fort Edward, NY is dependenton the worldwide market for the recycled plastics and paper that they sell. CAFTA opens up a new market for the material they produce, allowing jobs to stayin Fort Edward. The U.S. processed foods industry, which includes Kraft Foodsplant in Walton, already holds a quarter of the exported food market in Central America. Eliminating high tariffs on processed food products will present U.S.manufacturers new opportunities to grow exports, including dairy products likethose produced by the 164 employees at Kraft Foods in Delaware County.Just as important, this trade pact will increase the economic stability of ourCentral American neighbors and improve our national security. The passage of CAFTA is a sign of the successes our nation has experienced. Twenty years ago we were debating whether we should send guns and bullets to Central America and today as a result of our democratic achievements we have advanced trade and democracy throughout the world. Again, thank you for contacting me on CAFTA. If you have any additional questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely, JOHN E. SWEENEY Member of Congress

Two Hidden Factors Behind High Prices At The Pump

And an additional point to keep in mind, usually ignored by media: oil profits don't accrue simply to the giant producers, refiners, and distributors; oil is a traded commodity, and therein lies a whole, vast, additional layer of fat profiteers. . .

"Santa Monica, CA --- A study released by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights California (FTCR) today found oil company profiteering and the government's failure to respond to it are the cause of recent gasoline price spikes in California. Click here to read the report.

"The study by petroleum industry analyst Tim Hamilton showed, for example, that from January 17th to April 18th 2005 gasoline prices jumped 65 cents per gallon and refiner profits rose by 61 cents per gallon. The extra four cents went to the state in increased sales tax collection. The study concluded that California's percentage sales tax provides an economic incentive for government officials to promote high prices at the pump because they result in greater tax collection -- an estimated $1 billion more in California during 2005 due to the price gouging. The consumer group recommends a "windfall profits rebate" be instituted.

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/energy/pr/?postId=5084&pageTitle=New+Study+Finds+Oil+Company+Profiteering+Behind+Gasoline+Price+Spikes%3B+Bush+Called+Upon+To+Prevent+Profiteering

The View From A Jayhawk 

Critiques of Katrina No. 2

Jonathan Freedland underlines the twin themes of race disparity and bush's incompetence in his essay from Great Britain:

"Time and time again, America has been forced to wake up to the racial injustice which has been its historic curse. It was the source of a civil war in the 19th century and of repeated battles through the 20th...

"Katrina has rammed home that message once more, with lacerating force. White Americans, who regarded New Orleans as a kind of playground, a place to enjoy the carnal pleasures of music, food, drink and more, have learned things about that city - and therefore their society - that they would probably have preferred not to know. They have discovered that it was mainly white folks who lived on the higher, safer ground, while poorer, black families had to huddle in the cheaper, low-lying housing - that race, in other words, determined who got hit.

"They have also learned that 35% of black households in the area did not have a car. Or that the staff and guests of the Hyatt hotel were evacuated first, while the rest, the mainly poor and black, were at the back of the queue...

"They have had to face another painful truth. Their government has proved itself incompetent. Yes, it could act quickly once it had decided to act - but it idled for days. This disastrous performance will surely saddle the remainder of George Bush's presidency, just as the botched Desert One rescue of American hostages from the besieged US embassy in Tehran hobbled that of Jimmy Carter..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562901,00.html

Critiques of Katrina: No. 1

Over the following weeks, and in the context of what should serve as insights toward a conceptual model of what a modern state needs to become in a 21st. century of threatening human and natural consequences, the oge hopes to present various critiques of the nation's performance, pre- and post-Katrina, in an effort to explore the strengths and deficits in our public policies regarding not only disaster-preparedness (which includes the threat of terrorism) but our overall investment in the Republic's future. I appreciate any related postings by readers, or alerts to essays you encounter, regardless of their political orientation or logical integrity; sometimes fallacious analysis is important in clarifying problems. At some point, humor may help. I tried to touch on a number of such themes in my own analysis of 09.03.05; there will be better and additional ones, to be sure.

Robert Sheer kicks them off with today's predictably antibush essay in the LATimes; unfortunately, he omits Clinton from his censure of administrations, a troubling error if we want honestly to know how modern political leadership has failed the American people.

"...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."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-scheer6sep06,0,4722106.story?track=tottext

Quote of the Day

"If people resist the plea to leave, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified."

----Jim Judkins, Evacuation Official, Hampton Roads, Virginia

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/opinion/06tierney.html?th&emc=th

The New Eminent Domain: Backlash Continues

Strangle it. Drown it.

"... this St. Louis suburb decided last year to bulldoze all 254 homes in Sunset Manor and turn the land over to a shopping-mall developer. 'We cried and we prayed,' Lorraine Wright recalled. 'And we put a lot of hope into the Supreme Court, because they were supposed to decide whether this kind of thing is legal.'"

Shoot it in the head.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/05/AR2005090501087.html?referrer=email

From the "Who Gives a Flying Rat's Ass What YOU Think, You Simpering Little Twit" Files....

Apparently Billy Bush, cousin of W and Access Hollywood host, has decided to comment about his feelings on the Katrina crisis. Of course, when Florida was hit, they got all the aid they needed quickly, insurance comparies and FEMA emptying out their coffers so that Jeb's precious little state could recover. These assholes bring a whole new meaning to "keeping it in the family". All of this doesn't keep little Billy from feeling guilty, however:

"Billy Bush "Overwhelmed" By Katrina"

"People in despair ... while the air conditioning on my tour bus works perfectly and there is an abundance of food. The combination of helplessness and guilt is overwhelming. I know you know the feeling."

Oh DO WE you little Fortunate Son? I don't specifically remember feeling GUILTY about this, but then again it wasn't MY cousin at the helm of this particular sinking ship!

"my own instinctive guilt over the fact that my life is fortunate, is what opens my wallet"

Again little Billy feels guilty. Not once does he mention his family ties to the Bush Cabal. Still, this Rich Man's Burden sentiment is getting extremely irritating...Say Billy, instead of giving $5 to Red Cross you could talk your cousin into resigning. How's THAT for assuaging your Fortunate Son Guilt Complex?

The Drowning Lady

THE NEXT ACT IN THE TRAGEDY OF KATRINA

"The pre-Katrina plan for this Congressional season was to enact more upper-bracket tax cuts for the least needy, while cutting into the safety-net programs for sick and impoverished Americans. These are the very entitlement programs most needed by the sudden underclass of hundreds of thousands of hurricane refugees cast adrift like Dustbowl Okies. Will Congress dare to go forward with these retrogressive plans in the face of the suffering from Katrina? Its woeful track record suggests that, shockingly, the answer may be yes. "

So editorializes the NYTimes this morning. There is little to debate here if logic is applied. The emerging perspective, if anyone cares to invoke some common sense, is that the great divide in the country today is not only between the rich---whom the manipulated mythos has equated with a largely imaginary meritocracy---and the poor---whose lot has persistently been characterized, directly and deceptively, as a function of their own irresponsibility---as it is between the rich and the integrity of the nation. The dollar grab which has been supported by at least three decades of inept and corrupt political leadership (although it has bloomed into an obscene colossus of a fleur du mal under the disastrous folly of the little potus) has not only aggravated the poverty of the lower classes and imperiled the health of the middle, but has undermined the nation itself in all aspects of infrastructure and public works. This is the dynamic ignored by almost everyone in the media: a culture of systemic avarice destroys the social construct. Along with the economic strangulation of the helpless and the workers goes the starvation of the physical, scientific, moral, monumental, industrial, educational, and esthetic components of society---in short, everything that is not factored into the immediate production of shortterm profit. This is a natural and predictable function of a corporate system of capitalism unguided by responsible oversight, the external mechanism required to regulate an engine designed principally to generate immediate profit.

The disaster of Katrina illustrates the problem in stark outline. Contemptuous of any expenditures perceived as in the "public" area, the government at all levels neglected not only the poor people of the city, but the city itself: the fortifications of its levees, pumps, harbor, and all the infrastructure not immediately visible or profitable, no matter the long-term relevance. Funds to support the basic physical integrity of the city were diverted to fill the coffers of the rich and to support perceived political aims. The estimates of the "cost" of the tragedy, as advertized throughout the media all week, starting at a range of $10 to 20 billion, are so obscenely understated that one wonders who is counting what and why. One explanation for this is that the financial interests providing the figures literally can no longer calculate real costs because they are designed to reckon the narrow factors relevant to their niche in the market place. In the present system, which has lost most of its perspective of social interrelationship as it has embraced the business of profit grab, real cost has been discarded as an historical curiosity in those areas of former accountability as well as ignored in those areas of new discovery.

Although the fact and implications generally have been ignored by the MSM, the ecosphere is fractured---whether by a cycle of global warming and/or human abuse and neglect---and real cost will have to emerge as a revolutionary factor in all calculations. And it needs to begin with New Orleans as the paradigm.

We can hope that the example of this tragedy may impress on the American public a vision of the filthy underbelly of greed and empire---pathetically pursued as they have been under this incompetent administration---and illustrate the cruel follies of adolescent ideological fantasy and oblivious self-indulgence. It isn't that the neos have merely fought an unnecessary little war with the dollars of the middle class and the blood of the lower while the rich stole ever larger segments of the nation's wealth; they have been mining into the very foundation of the nation. You cannot discard the welfare of the people without sacrificing the health of the nation. No corporation knows this or can be expected to include it in its operational dynamics. Opposing ideologues are blind to it. Corrupted politicians and other disciples of Mammon don't care.

The Great Depression was not just about the excesses of Wall Street. It followed a population growth and industrial revolution which concluded the first great exploitation of the nation's natural (and human) resources, whether it was seen as such or not: the stripping of the entire continent's forests, the transformation of the prairies into the dust bowl, and the pollution and destruction of waterways and -sheds. The government in place, at least, was sufficiently visionary to follow the example of earlier civilizations (Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Mesopotamian) and launch a program of public works which helped restore and promote the national, natural, and human resources, while channeling the always dangerous energies of unoccupied younger males. This ethos extended into WWII, when income caps were imposed on the rich as their contribution to the war effort, and the G.I. Bill was enacted to facilitate the movement of millions of laborers into an educated middle class required to fuel an emerging technological society.

An aside: this aspect of social engineering never was, would not now or ever be, about throwing liquor money at spawning welfare mothers and their lazy boyfriends. They always exist, but in insignificant numbers within the economic frame. Their stereotypes are, however, of considerable use to those particular persons who end up in positions of power and use the practice of divisiveness to protect their status by exploiting their subjects' resident prejudices and resentments. Despite the fact that some of these individuals are highly skillful and can represent their methods as competitive practice and merit performance, these are damaged people who never learned or cannot practice the higher leadership skills of unification and mission. These two polar approaches appear at all levels of government, politics, and business. Watch for them in the coming weeks.

The cowardly little frat boy who inherited the white house, of course, doesn't have a clue. Devoted to an ideology so adolescent and simplistic that the term "silly" elevates it, a cabal of snotnoses who kept their underpants on during junior high showers, advises him and guides his policies. Accompanied by the leadership of both parties, a Congress so corrupted by the encampment of corporate lobbyists 34,000 strong at last count (which doubled in the first term of this administration) that it couldn't legislate its way out of a paperbag, sits with all the effectiveness of OJ's house boy. A judiciary so enslaved to the politics of the appointment process that Howdy Doody looks emancipated by comparison, rules on the rights of man, tossing a presidential election to the manor lords who slopped its jaded hacks some table scraps.

So the destiny of the Republic is solely in the hands of the electorate, unfortunately handicapped at this particular juncture in the history of America, by a largely dysfunctional fourth estate. The promise in and of the tragedy of Katrina is that the corrupt enfeeblement of government---apparently at all three levels in New Orleans' case---will emerge revealed, not just to the intellect, but to public sentiment.

What should we expect as the tragedy enacts its course? At the moment, be prepared for what may appear to be the callous, even cruel, invasion of the scene by troops and police forces. The routine initial response to any chaos is to control it. This is true for health care, psychiatry, policing, even public education. The process entails the protection of the responder and his comrades. Accordingly, resources will be expended to secure the disaster area even before victims are fed, clothed, or treated. The machinery simply operates that way. The assumptions are that you cannot address the needs of the victim/subject without a secure environment. The teacher needs quiet and order before he can instruct. The surgeon needs a compliant body before he cuts. The policeman needs to eliminate potential threats, even before he distinguishes between victims and perpetrators. Given a reasonable allocation of manpower---maybe a big given in this case---the various areas will be secured quickly, beginning with the focal ones, the arena, convention center, and intersections, spreading out to less concentrated areas. Resistance will fail just as quickly or retreat into pockets. Even small numbers of troops should secure these primary areas in a day, and relief should follow immediately as the second wave of responders delivers the goods.

Locating and then relocating isolated groups and individuals will likely last another week, depending on the resources, but within the second week I would expect this first stage of the human rescue largely to be accomplished. The main horror show will be over.

With week three the primary human drama will have shifted to the refugee centers (the oge does not know if "refugee" will be politically correct, but it is accurate). The second level of human needs will emerge, emotional, pyschiatric, familial, and social, entailing some exploration of reintegrationist strategies. It will be extremely interesting to see how the problems of resettlement are addressed. Geography will have to be determined, and I expect there will be an effort to scatter the refugees in order to minimize negative community impacts. I also expect that an altogether shamed government will try to disperse the refugees as quickly as possible in order to render them invisible and silent, as well as to avoid the agony of managing camps. Unfortunately, these are generally the least resourceful of the city's inhabitants, and they are accustomed to urban concentration. If dispersal, however rationalized, is the accepted strategy, anticipate a political drama of dimensions just as vast as the camp nightmare. Of course, both strategies could be pursued, with an official pretense at providing the refugees a choice.

In the refugee camps the amount of aid will quickly appear adequate, then generous, and even excessive. As the process of resettlement evolves, however, into individual cases, expect government to become increasingly stingy, and localities will begin figuring the true costs of absorbing transient and long-term indigents; barring a miracle of transformation, this government will try to pass on major costs to the localities.

Throughout all this expect the MSM to follow its customary weak modes of performance, featuring politicians who can hog the camera, celebrity acts of charity, and personal-interest stories, including heroics, minor outrages, and miscarriages of official conduct. The fundamental issues will remain covered under the silt of the flooding, and only a few honest souls will bring them to light from time to time as they are discovered or acknowledged. The whole story of the failure of an incompetent government to provide for the public protection will never be told in an open, meaningful way, no matter how many opportunists and idealists make the effort, and the harrowing narratives of the outraged reporters who have lived through the horror of week one (and maybe a milder week two) will gradually phase into minor book deals and awards as they recede into journalistic routine. Congressional committees will investigate, edit their findings as the self-service of politics may persuade, and grow grayer by the time their reports are published.

For the moment, however, it must be said that a corrupt government failed the people and the Republic once again, on the most elemental level of its Constitutional obligation, just as it did on 9/11, and just as it is doing in virtually every other area of governance today, whether in the management of the economy, the environment, foreign relations, health care (including public health), education, technology, science, and defense from threats natural and man-made.

Resettlement of the refugees, however, is linked to the fate of the city, and here lie the most challenging problems for government planners. From what I have seen, both the mayor and governor are useless politicians, and if their administrations follow suit, decision-making as well as funding would have to rise to the federal level. I see two distinct options, although accomodation between them is possible. The first is to clean up the city as is, offering employment in the process to the refugees, and help them move back. This poses the challenge of maintaining concentrated, medium- to long-term camps, which will gradually evacuate. It also assumes that Katrina was an anomaly and the area is re-inhabitable. The second is essentially to red-tag the place while a decision is made to relocate the city or to fortify it.

I expect the administration will try to avoid bold new opportunities as well as discharge their obligations on the cheap. At some point the economic need to maintain a port at the mouth of the Mississippi will trump the human concerns, and this will determine the city's redelineation. Construction of new housing or rehabilitation of the flooded neighborhoods will follow according to the financial determinants. I would expect a mix, with significant improvements to the levees and pumps.

What will likely not happen is the envisioning of Katrina as the shape of things to come.

A Noodle Maker 

Thanks to Mooshinator, Farce, Whirli, et al.

Thanks to Mooshinator and company for a great series of posts and comments while the oge was enjoying the wonders of the Pacific Northwest (more on this when I am rested up). I have to admit that Sally Jenkins' silly piece in the Post would have read better in the Onion, but then, even the NYTimes ran an ID oped piece earlier this year (for which they were promptly flogged by an irate readership), so I guess this type of silliness just underscores the general unreliability of the MSM; you have to use them for the reliable stuff they manage to put out part of the time, but you have to be on your guard. But maybe we all get tagged by a noodly appendage sometimes. . .

I made some notes for a post on the Katrina horror on the flight home, but by the time I drove upstate and got a night's sleep, it was partly obsolete; the media demonstrated, without a mea culpa, that they had missed the real story in the days up to landfall, so I will rest on this a couple days. Lou Dobbs just put it in perspective when he said this is the natural result of an administration which has been on a course of politicizing public service. If you wonder why so many federal officials seem ineffective and incoherent, it is likely no more complicated than that they are selected and promoted for their sycophancy (likely perceived as loyalty); all the principled characters have bailed already, including the generals who gave wise counsel, and Paul O'Neill,
who probably would have proved a responsible steward of the treasury. Even Tom Ridge, who couldn't think his way out of a paperbag, bailed before his house of cards would be revealed.

But the latest indictment, as noted by the desperate (and just as disreputable) mayor of the ruined city, was the hideously-conceived series of photo-ops the little fraud in the white house gimped his way through today. But as I promised, more on this in a day or two.

And a word of caution, which the oge pledges to follow as best he can: the MSM---not to mention all our brethren on their blogs---are often too prone to report irresponsible info, or to report it irresponsibly. As always, the truth is one of the earliest casualties in any episode of public interest.

Finally, the faster spinning of the earth's (molten) core is a phenomenon which the oge was accustomed to thinking probably accounted for the occasional reversal of the magnetic poles. But now. . .maybe it's the noodler after all.

Help the Katrina Disaster Relief Efforts...

I read that it will take $19 Billion to rebuild New Orleans. However, tens of thousands of people are lacking in the basic elements of survival like food, water, medicine and shelter NOW. Please donate to a reputable charity. Also don't forget the animal victims of this tragedy. Here are a few links:
http://www.redcross.org
http://www.noahswish.org
http://www.teamster.org/benefits/disasterrelief/disasterrelief.htm http://www.msana.com/msadisasterrelief.htm
http://www.la-spca.org/forms/donations.htm
http://www.hssm.org/

Shoot looters?

http://instapundit.com/archives/025281.php

I fully agree.