Truthiness = Goodiness

The Colbert Report

Laughed my ass off. The couple of times I saw Steve Colbert host TDS when Jon couldn't be there he was really good. He never tried to BE Jon and he doesn't try on the new show. We'll see how it holds up. It's greatest strength may be that it channels the same creative strength as the TDS.

Meanwhile O'Reilly is on with Jon tonight. Yikes!

Oh It's On

Please?


Pretty please?

How About a Human Being for President

Screenwriter, Shermen Yellen asks Can a Man Become President? I found myself reading this and mentally replacing "human being" for real man because it made more sense that way.

Wikipedia defines a human being as having "a highly developed brain and consequent capacity for abstract reasoning, speech, language, and introspection."

Ok, this would disqualify George "Bootsie" Bush from being a human being much less President of the United States--or as he pronounces it U-ny-ed States.

Raping the Corpse

Hey, I calls 'em likes I sees 'em.

Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

Mr. Greenstein's comments were echoed by Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut: "Poor people are going to get the short end of the stick, despite all the public sympathy. That's a great irony."

But many conservatives see logic, not irony, at work. If the storm exposed great poverty, they say, it also exposed the problems of the very policies that liberals have supported.

"This is not the time to expand the programs that were failing anyway," said Stuart M. Butler, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and advocacy group influential on Capitol Hill.

While the right has proposed alternatives including tax-free zones for businesses and school vouchers for students, Mr. Butler said, "the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.' "

Doubt about the effectiveness of some programs is only one factor shaping the current antipoverty debate. Another is political muscle: poor people do not make campaign contributions. Many do not even vote.

A third factor is the federal deficit, which leaves little money for new initiatives. And a fourth is the continuing support for tax cuts, including those aimed at the wealthiest Americans, which further limits spending on social programs.
Indeed, even as he was calling for deep spending cuts last week, Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, who leads the conservative caucus, called tax reductions for the prosperous a key to fighting poverty.

"Raising taxes in the wake of a national catastrophe would imperil the very economic growth we need to bring the Gulf Coast back," Mr. Pence said. "I'm mindful of what a pipe fitter once said to President Reagan: 'I've never been hired by a poor man.' A growing economy is in the interest of every working American, regardless of their income."

Ah yes. The Reagan years, a period of great economic prosperity. No, sorry, those were the Clinton years. These were the Reagan years.

The Grunts Know

Read ksuwildkat's diary at Daily Kos.

...As a soldier I have been involved in this war in one way or another since 1990. I was in Baghdad early on when we actually thought we could rebuild the country. It was a tough decision then to cut down the trees on the airport road then but when you are getting shot at, you have to do something. Now we are blowing up bridges. For the first time I believe we have lost. For the first time as a military professional I think we have no way of winning this. We are willing to destroy the basic structures of the country to deny the enemy their use. This means we have no other way to deny them the use of these assets. We can't stop them, the Iraqi Army can't stop them, the Iraqi police can't stop them and we can't collect enough intelligence to make the enemy pay for using what should be choke points.

There is no way to sugar coat this. This is a MAJOR development. That we have made it public is also a big deal because every other military professional in the world knows we are done. This war may go on for a long time but the conclusion is decided as far as I can see. I never imagined I would see this day.

If the boots on the ground think we're done...wow.

Pretty Much

A big chunk of the national media establishment do live and work in New York. As such, they understand that the subway is massive, it's how people get to and from their jobs, that most people are going to pay little attention to these warnings (or even be aware of them). The hysterical reporting is ridiculous.

How my roommate and I found out about the subway threat: We called our moms. They live in Chicago and Dallas. When we did get on the subway I saw all of two cops which is pretty standard and NOBODY was conducting searches. In fact it was the fastest commute we've had all summer. How seriously can we take things if there is no real attempt to protect us?

"Plenty Bright" II

Molly Ivins recalls the "moderate" Harriet Miers' 1989 campaign for city council in Dallas.

When pressed, she said she did believe one should be able to legally discriminate against gays, and it is the recollection of two of the organization's officers that the response involved her religious beliefs.

Miers' church states on its website that it believes in biblical inerrancy, full immersion baptism, original sin and salvation dependent entirely upon accepting Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to hell.

I'm still baffled that President Bootsie's nomination of his personal lawyer for the Supreme Court is something that we have to take seriously. This man has no shame.

And, by the way, has any WH Staff secretary ever had this kind of career path?

"Plenty Bright"

She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

Not fit to judge a hogcalling contest, AND insulting to female impersonators everywhere.

Bootsie, Bushie, and Brownie

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." To paraphrase Santayana, if you put an idiot in charge you're doomed.

My favorite history professor, Richard Berthold of "Anyone who can bomb the Pentagon gets my vote" fame, taught my favorite history class on Rome at the University of New Mexico several years ago. Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was the grandson of Augustus and as a small boy he was dressed in a tiny soldier's outfit and paraded in front of the Roman troops. They nicknamed him Caligula, because of the miniature version of soldier's sandal-boots he wore. Roughly translated, Caligula means Bootsie.

I've been reminded of Caligula several times over the last five years. There are lots of parallels between Bootsie and our own Little Lord Candy-ass. Both were born into powerful families; both played dress-up and paraded in front of real military troops; both came to power through questionable means. But my personal favorite: Caligula appointed a horse to the Roman senate, Bush appointed a horse's ass to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and so...

When Missing Class = Missing the Boat

Or when the lipstick of race is put on the class pig... Oh just go read the October 3, 2005 issue of The Nation. Adolph Reed Jr. cuts through the bullshit of Bush/FEMA/Katrina vs. NOLA like only Mr. Reed can.

What happened in New Orleans is the culmination of twenty-five years of disparagement of any idea of public responsibility; of a concerted effort--led by the right but as part of a bipartisan consensus--to reduce government's functions to enhancing plunder by corporations and the wealthy and punishing everyone else, undermining any notion of social solidarity.
...

The abstract, moralizing patter about how and whether "race matters" or "the role of race" is appealing partly because it doesn't confront the roots of the bipartisan neoliberal policy regime. It's certainly true that George W. Bush and his minions are indifferent to, or contemptuous of, black Americans in general. They're contemptuous of anyone who is not part of the ruling class. Although Bush and his pals are no doubt small-minded bigots in many ways, the racial dimension stands out so strikingly in part because race is now the most familiar--and apparently for many progressives the most powerful--language of social justice. For roughly a generation it seemed reasonable to expect that defining inequalities in racial terms would provoke some remedial response from the federal government. But for quite some time race's force in national politics has been as a vehicle for reassuring whites that "public" equals some combination of "black," "poor" and "loser"; that cutting public spending is aimed at weaning a lazy black underclass off the dole or--in the supposedly benign, liberal Democratic version--teaching blacks "personal responsibility."
...
Class will almost certainly turn out to be a better predictor than race of who was able to evacuate, who drowned, who was left to fester in the Superdome or on overpasses, who is stuck in shelters in Houston or Baton Rouge, or who is randomly dispersed to the four winds. I'm certain that class is also a better predictor than race of whose emotional attachments to place will be factored into plans for reconstructing the city.
...

Race is too blunt an analytical tool even when inequality is expressed in glaring racial disparities. Its meanings are too vague. We can see already that the charges of racial insensitivity and neglect threaten to divert the focus of the Katrina outrage to a secondary debate about how Bush feels about blacks and whether the sources of the travesty visited upon poor New Orleanians were "color blind" or racist. Beyond that, a racial critique can lead nowhere except to demands for black participation in decision-making around reconstruction. But which black people? What plans? Reconstruction on what terms? I've seen too many black- and Latino-led municipal governments and housing authorities fuel real estate speculation with tax giveaways and zoning variances, rationalizing massive displacement of poor and other working-class people with sleight-of-hand about mixed-income occupancy and appeals to the sanctity of market forces.

The only hope we have for turning back the tide of this thuggish Administration's commitment to destroy every bit of social protection that's been won in the past century lies in finding ways to build a broad movement of the vast majority of us who are not part of the investor class. We have to be clear that what happened in New Orleans is an extreme and criminally tragic coming home to roost of the con that cutting public spending makes for a better society. It is a shocking foretaste of a future that many more of us will experience less dramatically, often quietly as individuals, as we lose pensions, union protection, access to healthcare and public education, Social Security, bankruptcy and tort protection, and as we are called upon to feed an endless war machine.

Leaving Houston

UPDATE: Ceds made it to Austin at 5am CST. It took 12 hours to travel approximately 150 miles. That's 12.5 miles per hour. For the poor souls who are just now getting on the road, because now evacuation is mandatory, traffic is literally not moving.

Houston

Sister Ceds is being evacuated to Austin. Houston most likely won't be hit hard but they're worried about power outtages. At any rate she's fine.

Maintenance Stuff

We are now whoring for Barnes & Noble. Please click on the link and buy something. Also I've broken down and started a second blog about life in the Big Apple, the bits and pieces of it that I don't spend hunched over my laptop. It's called Turtle Tales and it's still growing legs. So go read and shake your head over how cool I'm not. Who knows? I may be inspired to go out and get cool.

W's Plans

Bush's insistence that his plans for reconstructing the U.S. gulf coast won't entail rolling back any past or proposed tax cuts shows that nothing really has changed and that the real power in Washington remains Grover Norquist and his Americans For Tax Reform. Norquist group reports that in addition to W himself, 221 US Representatives and 46 Senators have signed the so-called "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," which "solemnly bind[s]" them "to oppos[ing] any and all tax increases." If you want to get an idea of how these sleazeballs operate check out Elizabeth Drew's Selling Washington. Drew observes:

Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me, "It's not about governing anymore. The Congress is now a transactional institution. They don't take risks. So when a great moral issue comes up— like war—they can't deal with it." The theory that ours is a system of one-person-one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. Barney Frank argues that "the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way."

It's time for the Dem's to get out front and make it clear that responsible reconstruction of the gulf region cannot be achieved under this regime.

Of Course

Of Course

From Brian Williams via Daily Kos:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

Incompetence or Complicity?

The Guardian is reporting that former members of the Sept. 11 commission are denying that the Pentagon knew that Mohamed Atta was a terrorist for two years before 9/11/01 and destroyed loads of documentation that would have been mighty difficult to explain after 9/11/01.

A Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 2001 attacks, a congressman said Thursday.

The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to identify the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.
...
Pentagon officials said this month they had found three more people who recall an intelligence chart identifying Atta as a terrorist prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Two military officers, Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott, have come forward to support Weldon's claims.

I think I'm going to need a bathroom break to throw up.

Sweet Home Chicago

After a wrenching debate that reopened 37-year-old wounds, Chicago on Wednesday became the nation's largest city to demand an "orderly and rapid withdrawal" of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Impeachable Offense #1899

How Michael Brown Helped Bush Win Florida

Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, approved payments in excess of $31 million in taxpayer money to thousands of Florida residents who were unaffected by Hurricane Frances and three other hurricanes last year in an effort to help President Bush win a majority of votes in that state during his reelection campaign, according to published reports.
...
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.
...
But the most interesting charge against Brown is that he helped speed up payments in Florida and purposely bypassed FEMA's lengthy reviews process for distributing funds in order to help Bush secure votes in the state during last year's presidential election.

Read it and weep.

Meanwhile

The Roberts Hearings continue. It ain't lookin' good.

The Blame Game (cont.)

With Brownie gone, it's time to move on up the ladder of responsibility. The Wall Street Journal reports that "internal documents and emails from FEMA and other government agencies dating back to Aug. 31 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the extent to which the federal government bungled its response to the hurricane. The documents highlight serious deficiencies in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, a post-Sept. 11 playbook on how to deal with catastrophic events. Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an 'Incident of National Significance'" AND . . .

"Some Homeland Security officials are already starting to acknowledge significant weaknesses in the national response plan, which was completely disregarded at times during the crisis.

'We at the department are not well prepared, and unfortunately, recent history has shown that that's the case,' Lee Holcomb, the department chief technology officer told a breakfast meeting of Information Technology executives on Wednesday in Washington."

Specific failures cited by WSJ include delays in activating health and safety workers, delays in coordinating with the NIH, ordering the wrong number of buses . . . Chertoff, Chertoff, bo bertoff . . .