Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Ooo, It's The Holiday Season Already?

At the local grocery store I saw a big Santa Clause display last week, and I thought what the hell is that doing up there in September? Now I know:

A Texas grand jury today indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on a criminal count of conspiring with two political associates to violate state campaign finance law, and DeLay announced he was temporarily stepping down as House majority leader.

One count of criminal conspiracy, Sweet Baby Jeebus. As I said yesterday, hope springs eternal.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Indictments

The sweet scales of justice, may they fall on this man's head like a jettisoned porto-potty from an overburdened airliner:

Conspiracy counts against two DeLay associates this month raised concerns with DeLay's lawyers, who fear the chances are greater that the majority leader could be charged with being part of the conspiracy. Before these counts, the investigation was more narrowly focused on the state election code.

By expanding the charges to include conspiracy, prosecutors made it possible for the Travis County grand jury to bring charges against DeLay. Otherwise, the grand jury would have lacked jurisdiction under state laws.

People like me follow these things on a granular level, and your sanity sometimes depends on somebody getting caught for, you know, breaking the fucking law. Well, not really, but sometimes it would be nice. I must say I gained some solace from Digby when he wrote this:

Tom Delay, Gorver Norquist, Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney, Tom Davis, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and a bunch of other high level Republicans have likewise built a byzantine corrupt political machine. And just as the laws of the financial markets cannot be suspended forever, rampant illegal political behavior will eventually bump up against the rule of law.

Amen. And, hope is a real thing, isn't it? (As Ren Hoek tearfully once uttered to his chunky side-kick Stimpy, "What was your dream?")

Let's hope the rule of law brings down the entire Republican shithouse, and somehow Americans can figure out that there is real worth in competant governance.

(Thanks to JM for the tip)

War and Peace

I sure wish I could write, and blog, like this lady does. For example, Laura Rosen points us to this piece from Democracy Arsenal:

...I know what some will argue: how can we believe that we are getting out when Bush is clearly saying that we are not, as he did last week after a Pentagon briefing? In many ways, that’s the point. Bush is not going to give the anti-war movement a victory by standing up and saying: I’m wrong, I’m sorry, we’re failing, and now we are going to come home with our tails between our legs. And I don’t think this is only because of his arrogance: President’s rarely do that (the last I can think of is Ronald Reagan’s pullout of Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing).

What Bush will do is continue what he has been doing: push the imperfect political process along (in the face of criticism from think tankers and experts), slowly begin withdrawing, and talk up the glass-half-full argument. He can do this because he knows that even as things tailspin downward in Iraq, as long as our troops are leaving his political opposition won’t have the clout or support to offer the alternative -- to keep our troops there.

In a nutshell: prefect political cover for a withdrawal from Iraq.

p.s. If you care about American security, as I do, Laura is a must read. Plus, she has links to her recent print atricles...Sweetness achieved.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Withdrawal?

I stopped by Kevin Drum's place tonight, and he came across an article from the British newspaper the Observer stating that the British, at least, will begin a major withdrawal of troops from Iraq starting in May. That's good news, as I'm all for a staged withrawal of all foreign forces from Iraqi soil. Go check out what Kevin has to say. It's well worth a quick read.

On a related note, I happened by Dam Froomkin's White House Briefing over at the Washington Post, and one of his readers sent in a succinct critique of a happy horseshit talk the president gave the other day. This guy flayed Bush, and all he needed was one sentence:

White House Briefing reader J. Harley McIlrath of Grinnell, Iowa, e-mailed me yesterday some insightful questions about just one sentence of Bush's speech.

In fact, his questions about that one sentence alone were more penetrating and important than any of the coverage I read of Bush's whole speech this morning.

The sentence from Bush: "The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission."

McIlrath wrote:

"1. Who are 'the terrorists?' He's talking about Iraq. Are 'the insurgents' also 'the terrorists?' Has Bush ever defined just who 'the terrorists' are?

"2. What would constitute a 'win' for the terrorists? What do they want? Do we know? Has Bush ever asked himself what 'the terrorists' want and whether or not it's reasonable? Tactics aside, what do they want? Don't tell me 'they hate freedom.'

"3. What constitutes 'losing our nerve?' Is it losing one's nerve to pull resources back from an ineffectual approach and apply them to an approach that is more promising? How many times in WWII did we pull resources off one front to reinforce another?

"4. What is 'the mission.' Can we abandon a 'mission' that has never been defined? To quote George Harrison: If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

"Imagine if the press corps took this one short sentence and forced Bush to define his terms."

Dan has the red meat that Bush threw around the other day at the link above, and my guess is he'll eat those words sometime next year.

We've already lost the war in Iraq. And that's no small feat. All it took was an absolute lack of planning for the invasion's aftermath, staffing the Coalition Provisional Authority with complete hacks, disbanding the Iraqi army, and completely ignoring the fact that Iraq was already fractured along religious and tribal lines.

There are many things the United States owes the Iraqi people, and a sensible, timed withdrawal will not be easy, but it's the only option left that makes any sense. "Staying the course" is nothing more than utter madness.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

A Watchful Eye

I'm going to keep my eye on just how we're going to pay for all the cash that the president has promised to spend on the Gulf's reconstruction. As yet we don't have a bill from Congress, but we're hearing a few rumblings, and what's being proposed so far is a conservative's wet dream. Cancel tax cuts for people making over $100,000/yr., ones that have yet to take effect? No. Nix a tax break for Paris Hilton and her family? Sorry. How about diverting some of the pork in the Transportation Bill, like the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere? Get real you crybaby. Let's do some slashing:

-Delay the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill for One year
-Increase Allowable Co-pays in Medicaid
-Block Grant Medicaid Acute Services
-Reduce Farm Payment Acreage by 1%
-Eliminate Subsidized Loans to Graduate Students
-Increase Medicare Part B Premium from 25% to 30%
-Level Funding for the Peace Corps
-Eliminate the Federal Anti-Drug Advertising
-Eliminate Federal Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
-Eliminate State Grants for Safe and Drug-Free Schools
-Eliminate the Even Start Program
-Eliminate Teen Funding Portion of Title X Family Planning
-Eliminate Funding for Penile Implants Under Medicare

Um, one thing, how did we end up paying for that last item in the first place? You'd almost want to conclude some old, white fart in Congress needed some help...oh nevermind. Want more? I know you do. Check out Kevin Drum's post on The Republican War on the Poor.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Lay It On Thick

This article from today's Washington Post got me thinking back a few days ago when I read about a strategy for dealing with the political fallout from the painfully slow federal response to hurricane Katrina, from Time magazine:

By late last week, Administration aides were describing a three-part comeback plan. The first: Spend freely, and worry about the tab and the consequences later. "Nothing can salve the wounds like money," said an official who helped develop the strategy. "You'll see a much more aggressively engaged President, traveling to the Gulf Coast a lot and sending a lot of people down there."

The second tactic could be summed up as, Don't look back. The White House has sent delegates to meetings in Washington of outside Republican groups who have plans to blame the Democrats and state and local officials. In the meantime, it has no plans to push for a full-scale inquiry like the 9/11 commission, which Bush bitterly opposed until the pressure from Congress and surviving families made resistance futile. Congressional Democrats have said they are unwilling to settle for anything less than an outside panel, but White House officials said they do not intend to give in, and will portray Democrats as politicking if they do not accept a bipartisan panel proposed by Republican congressional leaders. Ken Mehlman, the party's chairman and Bush's campaign manager last year, told TIME that viewers at home will think it's "kind of ghoulish, the extent to which you've got political leaders saying not 'Let's help the people in need' but making snide comments about vacations."
The third move: Develop a new set of goals to announce after Katrina fades. Advisers are proceeding with plans to gin up base-conservative voters for next year's congressional midterm elections with a platform that probably will be focused around tax reform.

So let's review; Spend freely, don't look back, blame Democrats, avoid any accounting for what went wrong, and push issues the party faithful will vote for in the midterm elections in '06.

Now, estimates put the price tag on rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at $200 billion, and Congress has already appropriated some $61 billion towards that effort. Just how will we as a nation help pay for this? From the Post article referenced above:

To reach $62 billion in savings, Cato Institute analysts Chris Edwards and Stephen Slivinski have proposed cutting NASA in half, slashing energy research and subsidies just as Congress is gearing up to increase them in the face of soaring gasoline prices, cutting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' budget by $4.6 billion after its levees failed to protect New Orleans, and eliminating $4.2 billion in homeland security grants while lawmakers are debating the nation's lack of preparedness.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but the Cato proposal is to slash the budget of the Corps of Engineers, the people responsible for rebuilding the decrepid levees, because the levees failed in the first place? So how do they get rebuilt? At least we know where the savings come from.

Then today, I run across another piece from the Post from Dan Froomkin, and he passes along this little gem (Dan also goes into the stagecraft for Bush's speech for tonight):

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Nice how it all comes into view. The man who constructs every political move made by the president is now in charge of doling out all the cash. Karl Rove knows as much about running reconstruction programs as the former head of FEMA Michael Brown knew about mitigating disasters. Or, judging horse shows for that matter. However, give credit where it is due: Karl sure knows how to raise poltical cash. Take for granted an absolute void of congressional oversight, and the president has just handed him the biggest political slush fund ever known to mankind.

I remember watching Book TV on CSPAN-2 a while back, and Mollly Ivans was discussing James Moore's book, Bush's Brain. Knowing Texas politics so well, she described how Rove wasn't really the "brain" of Bush; they were more peas in a pod than anything else. From all I've read, that makes a lot of sense. Back in the early days, Bush was known as a political bully, a fixer, and a useful hack. He did serve as a handy front man during his father's failed presidential run in '88. His closest partner is arguably the most ruthless political hatchet man in American history. A man unbound by rules, and unencumbered by any sense of fairness or human decency.

So there you have it America, welcome to the Second Act of "Compassionate Conservatism".

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Answers...How Sweet

Hours ago, I asked some questions: Thankfully, I now have answers:

At first the evidence was scattered and anecdotal. But now it's pretty clear that a key aim of the Bush administration's takeover of the NOLA situation is to cut off press access to report the story.

First, there was the FEMA orders barring members of the press from photographing anything to do with the recovery of the bodies of the dead.

Perhaps there could be guidelines about photographs which in any way clearly identified the deceased. No one wants to get first confirmation of the death of a loved by seeing their bodies on the nightly news. But a blanket ban serves only to prevent the public from knowing what really happened. And the right of FEMA or the federal government at all on American soil to issue such a ban seems highly dubious to me. It's one thing with military casualties: the military operates under its own legal code and not under normal civilian rules. But this is happening on American soil. It's not a war zone. It's recovery from a natural disaster.

Now comes this post from Brian Williams, which suggests a general effort to bar reporters from access to many of the key points in the city.

Take a moment to note what's happening here: these are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism. The crew that couldn't get key aid on the scene last week is coming in in force now and taking as one of its key missions cutting public information about what's happening in the city.

This is a domestic, natural disaster. Absent specific cases where members of the press would interfere or get in the way of some particular clean up operation or perhaps demolition work there is simply no reason why credentialed members of the press should not be able to cover everything that is happening in that city.

Think about it.

Here's a taste from Brian Williams:

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

"perfectly backward"...Karl Rove's America...Joseph Goebbles would've been proud...

Racist America

I know Crooks and Liars will have the video up by tomorrow, but I just saw NonBlonde Michelle Malkin say to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that we need to get to the bottom of how New Orleans' police and firefighters were "first obstructors, not first responders".

Why does Fox News let a known rascist on to criticize cops and fireman?

I've never seen such a tiny person so full of hate. This not only flips the "law and order" viewpoint on its head, it twists and mangles it into something I don't even recognize, let alone understand.

I guess people, even pundits, become detached from reality, but that statement was truly bizarre.

[And by the way, I've been arrested before, and I found the police to be rather understanding. I told them, "hey, I know you're just doing your job." As long as the ground rules are in place, and you don't give them any shit, they're really nice people.]

What She Said

Over at This Is Not Over, Miss Alli has a short essay...do indulge...she clears the bases with this one. Here's a tease...go see for yourself...

My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying.

One Thing To Watch For

I've read a couple of reports that photographers are being harrassed, and that the press is not being allowed to cover things on the ground in New Orleans.

Now that the military has taken control of the city, are all the reporters essentially embedded? Will we be limited to seeing overhead shots of the city from helicopters? The press operation for this administration has mastered stagecraft, and you can bet they're not happy about all of the footage that came out of the city last week. What measures will they employ to control the images coming out of the city now? Something worth keeping an eye on...

Oh, need a reminder of the stagecraft? Who's head is bigger?

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

A Failure of Ideology

This has been festering inside my rotten skull for a few days, and I'm going to snatch and grab from others I agree with to illustrate my point. There are better ways to run a more responsible government than the ones we've seen in the last five years. As I've said before, this tragedy in New Orleans will unearth more than it covers up. Here's one precept from Amy Sullivan:

We've heard the warning "this isn't about politics" over and over in the last few days. The hell it isn't. And I don't mean kicking Bush while he's down, just for the fun of it, although there are surely liberals eager to do that. For the rest of us, however, we're seeing the awful real world consequences of conservatism play out on our television screens. This is why we're liberals. We don't yell about poverty and racial disparities for kicks. An evacuation plan that consists of telling people to get out on their own is not an evacuation plan.

Liberals, or at least ones like me, believe that government can be a useful check in the face of rabid capatilism. Bringing more people into the middle class behooves us all; more tax revenue, more opportunities, better wages, higher earning potential, better education. A robust investment in human capital. Investing in people. Simple.

I have nothing whatsoever against capatalism, but history shows us if we let things go the way of the roaring '20's, we never took the time to learn the most important lessons.

Let's go to the Economist from Princeton:

But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

We shouldn't. Liberals believe in a government that can respond to the most dire needs of its citizens. This country is so rich, is there no way to provide for people that live within our borders? Conservatives have spent 30 years, back since Goldwater ran for president, convincing the American public that government is the problem, and that there's no reason for it other than to collect taxes and provide for a robust military. And lately a strong military for what, dethroning a tin-pot wannabe? Like Saddam Hussein?

[As an aside, I've heard Conservatives for years yelling about, "We took out Saddam!". And you're proud of that? He was a pussified, toothless wimp. No navy, no air force, ancient Russian-made tanks, and a feeble infantry. And that is supposed to demonstrate American power? If it is, the decision to attack Iraq is pathetic, and makes us look extremely weak.]

And finally another piece from Kevin Drum:

IDEOLOGY AND REAL LIFE....One of the things that Hurricane Katrina has done is shine a very bright light on the different worldviews of liberals and conservatives.

Conservatives fundamentally believe in a limited role for the federal government. They believe in downsizing, privatizing, and placing greater reliance on state and local government to provide essential services. It's easy — too easy — to blame George Bush in hindsight for specific things like cutting the Corps of Engineers budget for the New Orleans district, but the reason this criticism is legitimate is because this wasn't merely a specific incident. As even some conservatives tacitly admit, it was a direct result of George Bush's governing ideology.

FEMA was downsized and partially privatized because modern Republican leaders think that's the right thing to do with federal agencies. Budgets were limited for levee construction and first responder training because Republicans have other priorities. The federal government was slow to respond to Katrina because conservatives believe states should take the lead in looking out for their own needs. George Bush talks endlessly to the cameras about the private sector helping to rebuild the Gulf Coast because that's the kind thing conservatives believe in.

Liberals, by contrast, believe in a robust role for the federal government. We believe in sharing risk nationwide for local disasters. We believe that only the federal government is big enough to coordinate relief on the scale needed by an event like Katrina, and that strong, well managed agencies like FEMA should take the lead role in making this happen.

Both of these governing philosophies are defensible, but too often they seem like nothing more than opposing sides in an intellectual game. Katrina demonstrates otherwise. It's what happens when a drowning city runs smack into a conservative movement that believes in drowning the federal government in a bathtub.

So there you have it: a philosophy for governing that works not just for the rich and privileged, but for all Americans.

One final note. There's a big sleight of hand going on here. While Conservatives' pound an endless drumbeat to convince everyone that government is bad for us, the ones in power firmly believe in taking your tax dollars and funneling them directly to their friends. Don't be naive and think government doesn't work for them; it's paid off handsomely.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Nauseating

Via Daily Kos, this out tonight from the New York Times:

White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 - Under the command of President Bush's two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

[...]

In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.

"The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."

[...]

Ms. Rice did not return to Washington until Thursday, after she was spotted at a Broadway show and shopping for shoes, an image that Republicans said buttressed the notion of a White House unconcerned with tragedy.

As the article shows, the entire administration was scattered to the winds; on vacation, or out of the country as New Orleans drowned. And while the president smirked and cracked jokes at his made-for-TV briefing, he apparently expressed alarm upon returning. What I'm genuinely not sure of is whether he was alarmed at how bad the situation was, or how badly he now looks for such a colossal failure of leadership.

So what's the answer? Blame Democrats. Anything but admit they screwed up in any way. Funny how this works: no plan enacted to save lives during the crisis, but a sure fire plan to cover their asses. Unreal. I have to say, I wouldn't trust any one of them to walk an elderly person across the street. There's now way the old-timer makes it across alive.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

From The Right

If you're poor, and you didn't have the money to get out of town, The Doughy Pantload has your back:

The “poor and black have been left behind” meme is now in full swing on CNN and MSNBC.

Oh he's not done yet:

CLASS CARDS & DISASTER [Jonah Goldberg]
Several readers complain that it's in fact true that the hurricane will disproportionately affect poor people. I don't really dispute that in the sense most mean it. Yes, the poor will have special hardships. Obviously so. But what I objected to, and still object to, is the reflexive playing of the class card. Is it really true that some middle class retirees who heeded the advice of the government to leave town, only to watch their homes be looted after a lifetime of hardwork for a better life are suffering less than a poor person who lost his rented apartment? What's the metric for measuring this sort of suffering? What about the small businessman who worked his entire life to build something he's proud of? What about the families who lost loved ones, but had the poor taste to make more money than the poverty line?

Whatever happened to the idea that unity in the face of a calamity is an important value? We're all in it together, I guess, except for the poor who are extra-special.

Gee, I wonder what Bill O'Reilly, a.k.a., America's Shitmouth, has to say:

Moral of the story: People were warned to get out. Those who stayed paid a price for that decision. If you rely on the government, you’re likely to be disappointed. No government can protect you or provide for you. You have to do it yourself. If a Category 5 story is headed your way, get out fast.

See folks, this is where the hatespeech from the Right folds inward, and it gets aimed directly at American citizens. After 9/11, their fulminations were cast outward towards any enemy, whether they were real or not; Al-Qaeda and transnational terrorism comprised the former, while Iraq, the French, and Liberals embodied the latter. In hindsight, President Bush was able to successfully morph Osama bin Laden into Saddam Hussein rather easily, and right before everyone's eyes.

Ironically, as New Orleans sinks, many things about America will be unearthed, and as the quotes above show us, it will not be pretty. For many on the Right, being American has nothing to do with a sense of shared national sacrafice, or any thought that we're all in this together. For them, it seems, it's about we have it, and you don't. If you don't have the cash or the clout, and worse yet if you don't fall in line, then you are the enemy, period.

As Big T put it, "The 2000 election was like the Stonewall Riots for the rightwing. They can now go out in public without their hoods, chanting: We're here, we're racist, and we hate you."

Federal Emergency Management Agency

I put the full title of FEMA up there because it pretty clearly describes what their mission should be all about: managing emergencies.

If you were interviewing people for leadership of that agancy, and you knew that an applicant was "was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows", that would put the candidate's application in the "are you kidding me?" pile, no?

Not if you're doing the hiring for the Bush administration. Apperantly, the only qualifications needed are access to power, and above all, loyalty (via Josh Marshall):

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

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.

(Give me more, this guy has potential written all over him!)

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

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.

So, if you're a Republican hack, and you've paid your dues, you deserve your place at the taxpayer feeding trough as head of some no-name, do-nothing agency.

Oh but our wayward path through this hop-scotch game we call life is put upon from all sides, and as the cruel hand of fate would have it, if you're hired as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, you're supposed to know how to MANAGE A FUCKING EMERGENCY. That, and try not to get fired from overseeing horsee shows too, mmkay?

You might also wonder, who is this Joseph Allbaugh fellow? Again, we turn to our friend Josh Marshall, who really is a one-man wrecking ball/news gathering organization (someone give him a Pulitzer). This item is from September of 2003:

Let me introduce you to New Bridge Strategies, LLC. New Bridge is 'Helping to Rebuild a New Iraq' as their liner note says.

Here's the company's new blurb from their website ...

New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C. and on the ground in Iraq.
A 'unique company'? You could say that. Who's the Chairman and Director of New Bridge? That would be Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's longtime right-hand-man and until about six months ago his head of FEMA. Before that of course he was the president's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000.
Allbaugh was part of the president's so-called 'Iron Triangle' -- the other two being Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. And now Allbaugh's running an outfit that helps your company get the sweetest contracts in Iraq? That sound right to you? Think he'll have any special pull?

Visit the site to see their "interactive map of Iraq [which] will show areas of opportunity in the post-war rebuilding effort for specific industries."

It's James Fisk and Jay Gould of Arabia. Unbelievable ...

The next time you start your very own war of choice, make sure your friends get in on the ground floor for all those new "opportunities" that just opened up. And if you're the guy setting up shop, don't forget to give your flunkie old roommate a call to take over the federal agency you just left in tatters. It's been said before many times by people wiser than me; this really is the modern Republican Party in a nutshell. Governing a nation is for pussies. What reigns above all else is fealty, patronage, cronies, and cash. As the current head of the CIA once put it, "show me a stained blue dress and I'll open an investigation".

Friday, September 02, 2005

Levity

Being a politcal junkie, and a Liberal (ew, gross!), whenever I need a giggle I go to the King of Snark, the good Mr. Tbogg. Upon President Bush's visit to Ole Miss, T gives us this:

"Mommy, who was that monkey-faced man?"
"I dunno, but he left us this banana..."

It takes a lot for me to be embarassed for George W. Bush. This pretty much fills the bill.

You can dress him up, but you can't take him out. Or let him talk to people.

Follow the link in his post to see how our Dear Leader works his magic over the populace.

And who can beat Thrusday night Basset Blogging: (Sorry dude, I'm stealing your puppy photo, but I did give you a plug)

Who Are You Going To Believe?

Me, or your lying eyes?

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday. The sanitized view came from federal officials at news conferences and television appearances. But the official line was contradicted by grittier, more desperate views from the shelters and the streets.

These conflicting views came within hours, sometimes minutes of each of each other, as reflected in CNN's transcripts. The speakers include Michael Brown, chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, evacuee Raymond Cooper, CNN correspondents and others. Here's what they had to say:

Conditions in the Convention Center

FEMA chief Brown: We learned about that (Thursday), so I have directed that we have all available resources to get that convention center to make sure that they have the food and water and medical care that they need. (See video of CNN asking why FEMA is clueless about conditions -- 2:11)
Mayor Nagin: The convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for the 15,000 to 20,000 people. (Hear Nagin's angry demand for soldiers. 1:04)
CNN Producer Kim Segal: It was chaos. There was nobody there, nobody in charge. And there was nobody giving even water. The children, you should see them, they're all just in tears. There are sick people. We saw... people who are dying in front of you.
Evacuee Raymond Cooper: Sir, you've got about 3,000 people here in this -- in the Convention Center right now. They're hungry. Don't have any food. We were told two-and-a-half days ago to make our way to the Superdome or the Convention Center by our mayor. And which when we got here, was no one to tell us what to do, no one to direct us, no authority figure.

Uncollected corpses
Brown: That's not been reported to me, so I'm not going to comment. Until I actually get a report from my teams that say, "We have bodies located here or there," I'm just not going to speculate.
Segal: We saw one body. A person is in a wheelchair and someone had pushed (her) off to the side and draped just like a blanket over this person in the wheelchair. And then there is another body next to that. There were others they were willing to show us. ( See CNN report, 'People are dying in front of us' -- 4:36 )
Evacuee Cooper: They had a couple of policemen out here, sir, about six or seven policemen told me directly, when I went to tell them, hey, man, you got bodies in there. You got two old ladies that just passed, just had died, people dragging the bodies into little corners. One guy -- that's how I found out. The guy had actually, hey, man, anybody sleeping over here? I'm like, no. He dragged two bodies in there. Now you just -- I just found out there was a lady and an old man, the lady went to nudge him. He's dead.

Hospital evacuations
Brown: I've just learned today that we ... are in the process of completing the evacuations of the hospitals, that those are going very well.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It's gruesome. I guess that is the best word for it. If you think about a hospital, for example, the morgue is in the basement, and the basement is completely flooded. So you can just imagine the scene down there. But when patients die in the hospital, there is no place to put them, so they're in the stairwells. It is one of the most unbelievable situations I've seen as a doctor, certainly as a journalist as well. There is no electricity. There is no water. There's over 200 patients still here remaining. ...We found our way in through a chopper and had to land at a landing strip and then take a boat. And it is exactly ... where the boat was traveling where the snipers opened fire yesterday, halting all the evacuations. ( Watch the video report of corpses stacked in stairwells -- 4:45 )
Dr. Matthew Bellew, Charity Hospital: We still have 200 patients in this hospital, many of them needing care that they just can't get. The conditions are such that it's very dangerous for the patients. Just about all the patients in our services had fevers. Our toilets are overflowing. They are filled with stool and urine. And the smell, if you can imagine, is so bad, you know, many of us had gagging and some people even threw up. It's pretty rough.(Mayor's video: Armed addicts fighting for a fix -- 1:03)

Violence and civil unrest
Brown: I've had no reports of unrest, if the connotation of the word unrest means that people are beginning to riot, or you know, they're banging on walls and screaming and hollering or burning tires or whatever. I've had no reports of that.
CNN's Chris Lawrence: From here and from talking to the police officers, they're losing control of the city. We're now standing on the roof of one of the police stations. The police officers came by and told us in very, very strong terms it wasn't safe to be out on the street. (Watch the video report on explosions and gunfire -- 2:12)

The federal response:
Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.
Homeland Security Director Chertoff: Now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.
Crowd chanting outside the Convention Center: We want help.
Nagin: They don't have a clue what's going on down there.
Phyllis Petrich, a tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.

Security
Brown: I actually think the security is pretty darn good. There's some really bad people out there that are causing some problems, and it seems to me that every time a bad person wants to scream of cause a problem, there's somebody there with a camera to stick it in their face. ( See Jack Cafferty's rant on the government's 'bungled' response -- 0:57)
Chertoff: In addition to local law enforcement, we have 2,800 National Guard in New Orleans as we speak today. One thousand four hundred additional National Guard military police trained soldiers will be arriving every day: 1,400 today, 1,400 tomorrow and 1,400 the next day.
Nagin: I continue to hear that troops are on the way, but we are still protecting the city with only 1,500 New Orleans police officers, an additional 300 law enforcement personnel, 250 National Guard troops, and other military personnel who are primarily focused on evacuation.
Lawrence: The police are very, very tense right now. They're literally riding around, full assault weapons, full tactical gear, in pickup trucks. Five, six, seven, eight officers. It is a very tense situation here.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Try Turning On The TV

I had been watching CNN and MSNBC almost all day, and they were documenting the fact that people were starving to death at the Convention Center since morning. Then, late in the afternoon I heard this interview with the head of DHS:

Robert Siegel: We are hearing from our reporter, he’s on another line right now, thousands of people at the convention center in New Orleans with no food, zero.

Chertoff: As I said, I’m telling you we are getting food and water to areas where people are staging. The one about an episode like this is if you talk to someone or you get a rumor or an anecdotal version of something I think it’s dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place.

[Snip]

Robert Siegel: But Mr. Secretary when you say we shouldn’t listen to rumors. These are things coming from reporters who have not only covered many many other hurricanes, they’ve covered wars and refugee camps. These aren’t rumors, they are saying there are thousands of people there.

Chertoff: I would be…I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food and water.

Had he not heard? It was ALL over the news. No one told him? No one briefed him? A man who brushes off facts as rumors is clearly completely out of the loop, or spending entirely too much time in front of microphones spinning what's really happening. What is frightening, but most telling, is that he really is getting updated from his people on the ground and they have absolutely no idea of what's going on either. This is an indication that the Federal relief effort is in utter chaos. When Robert Siegel and I know more than the head of the Homeland Security Department, we've got problems people. And a loud Huzzah! goes out to Robert for tossing aside his "rumor" dodge. Yeah, blame it on "rumors" because your head is so far up your ass you can pull out your own colon pollops with your teeth, you fucking jackass...

Under this administration, this guy has a promotion coming...

National Geographic: Gone With The Water

Via Daily Kos, a piece from National Geographic:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.
But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however--the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level--more than eight feet below in places--so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't--yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City.

The point here is that this was published in October of 2004.

President Bush: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Mr. President, care to revise your statement?

How?

I've been trying to get my head around what's happened today New Orleans, and what's still going on, and the enormity of it all really floors me.

The question for me is, given that FEMA was gutted, and the budgets for projects aimed at improving the levees were slashed, could the flooding of New Orleans have been avoided? I'm not an engineer, and I'm certainly not there, so it's hard for me make any informed guess. Maybe that's something we'll never really know. But all the warning signs were there in plain view. FEMA itself put it as number three on their list of the most probable disasters facing our country.

How will Americans see their government six months or a year from now? There will be plenty of blame to go around after all this is over, and maybe no herculain effort could've avoided such a shocking loss of life, nevermind an entire city.

I guess we'll all have to wait and see, but for right now, the fact that thousands of people are dying in a major American city because they lack food and water is beyond my grasp.

Doesn't Know, Doesn't Care

President Bush said this on ABC this morning:

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Either he has no idea of the relevant issues surrounding the New Orleans disaster, and worse yet, no one has briefed him, or he is deliberately misleading the American people.

I cannot see how this man is not viewed by history as a complete and total failure.

Not The Time For Politics?

Yes, well, not the time for complete incompetence either. I've been reading through many of these same stories in the last twenty-four hours, but Kevin Drum pulls them altogether:

CHRONOLOGY....Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."
2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.

March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

I wish I could say I was shocked or suprised, but this really is par for the course for the modern Republican Party. As for the current head of FEMA, you would hope Michael Brown would have some experience mitigating natural disasters. You'd be wrong, he's a an estate planning lawyer.

Marble Composition