Did anyone else see Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson on Countdown tonight? He totally kicked ass. Keith was asking him about the Bush supporters in SLC who felt he was doing them a disservice by appearing at a protest against Bush, and he had the most brilliant response: If he'd met Bush at the airport, and accompanied him to his speech, and stood at his side grinning, and applauded him, and stood as part of a standing ovation, no one would have said a word. Support is expected, and accepted. Dissent is not.
Question of the Day
We’ve already had a great question today, care of the ever-splendid Waveflux, so make sure to stop by that thread, if you haven’t already.
For this evening’s question: If you remember, how did you stumble across Shakespeare’s Sister?
Daily Round-up
Shakes: Two-minute nostalgia sublime
Shakes: Olbermann’s Murrow Moment
Shakes: Can you feel the crumbling?
Waveflux: Who’s your Alec Baldwin?
Shakes: The alarm’s going off, but America’s hitting snooze.
Shakes: Chaz gets America
Shakes: Drums, bitchez
Shakes: The Scream
Shakes: Caption This Photo
Shakes: Look who they’ve got their Haynes on now.
Shakes: Katrina Rewind
Shakes: No Shit
Shakes: Actual Headline
Actual Headline
Bush says U.S. must win in Iraq—Oh, why didn’t you just say so before? Now, we’re sure to turn that proverbial corner.
How ridiculous is this rhetoric getting?
"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq… The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation ... and on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism… They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century.”The security of the civilized world depends on the total annihilation of all terrorists? Come on. Completely ending terrorism isn’t even possible; nearly every major world power in “the civilized world” has suffered domestic terrorist attacks (including the US). Our collective security is more likely to be undermined by a major economic disaster, global warming, or pandemic influenza than Islamic terrorists. Get a fucking grip.
And the comparison between stateless terrorists and “totalitarians of the 20th century” couldn’t be more inaccurate—politically, militarily, objectively, in any way logically…it just doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s historically nonfactual hyperbole. End of story.
President Potty Mouth
Dozens of viewers are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to order broadcast fines over President Bush’s swearing at the G-8 summit in July.The FCC has received over two dozen complaints. Wah wah wah.
Bush apparently thought a microphone was off while he was speaking privately with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a luncheon at the leaders’ meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia. Discussing fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Bush used the word s—. His comments , picked up and carried over TV and radio feeds, came just four months after the Federal Communications Commission said that the word was one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit words relating to excretory activity in the English language and would likely trigger fines if broadcast.
Had I no integrity, they’d be receiving one more. But my complaining about Bush cursing would sort of be like him complaining about my grammar.
Oy
Wait Til He Gets His Haynes on You: “Maybe Bush thinks he can sneak him by in August when nobody is noticing. Bush has again nominated the previously filibustered William J. Haynes II as Justice for the Fourth District Court. Yeah. Again. Haynes gets not even a once over in the AP cite.” The Heretik’s got more at the link.
Recovered Scream
Edward Munch’s The Scream and Madonna have been found after being stolen two years ago. A serendipitous day for their recovery as far as I’m concerned, considering how I’m feeling today, heh.
"We are 100 percent certain they are the originals," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage was much less than feared."Huzzah. I’ve always really liked those pieces.
It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
Iran remained defiant Thursday as a U.N. deadline arrived for it to halt uranium enrichment, and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said unanimity among the Security Council was not needed to take action against Tehran.I think they’re playing “Exchange a Letter,” too. N for Q.
Key European nations will meet with Iran in September in a last-ditch effort to seek a negotiated solution to the standoff over Tehran's refusal to freeze uranium enrichment, a senior U.N. diplomat said Thursday.
President Bush said "there must be consequences" for Iran, adding that the war between Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants and Israel demonstrated that "the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran."
And guess what? I have precisely the same questions/objections I had during the first verse of this song. Where is the unassailable evidence from the intelligence community proving the administration’s claims of the “grave threat” that necessitates an immediate action? Once again, it doesn’t exist.
Last August, the first major review since 2001 of what is known and what is unknown about Iran found that “that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon,” and represented “consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies” and a total contrast to “forceful public statements by the White House.” Back in April, Stephen Rademaker, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, claimed Iran could produce a nuclear bomb in 16 days. Huh. That’s quite a fucking disparity, no?
The House Intelligence Committee thinks so, too. Last week, they issued a report warning against uncritically marching down the same road to a war in Iran as we did to war in Iraq, asserting “American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program” and that information "regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive" and “little evidence has been gathered to tie Iran to al-Qaeda and to the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.”
What’s that? It almost sounds like the administration is pushing an agenda rooted in inconclusive intelligence on both WMDs and terror ties. Gee, that has a familiar ring.
And, like I’ve said before, all the assumptions in the world can’t substitute as evidence. If we need to take action against Iran, then fine. But that need must be determined by rigorous analysis of facts, not by the Bush Gut, or pants-wetting fears about what could be, or the salivation of warmongers, or anything else. This administration has already blown it big time once.
No doubt Ahmadinejad is a nutball. But is he a nutball tiger with teeth, or with just a roaring bravado masking his lack of them? (To use a contemporary reference, is he a nutball who actually killed a blond little pageant princess, or a nutball who just claims to have killed her?) Before the Iraq war, the suggestion that Saddam was a toothless tiger was considered laughable—and yet, it was right. Saddam was the John Mark Karr of despots—an odious, nasty dude with a wicked history, and totally innocent of the current crimes he himself professed to commit. We've got a bad track record following such men down the trails they want us to go, and we need to be sure we're not making the same mistake again.
Barkley Gets It Right
Snap:
Charles Barkley [former NBA MVP, who is considering running as a Democratic candidate for governor in his home state of Alabama] was … a Republican until recently, saying he switched parties when the Republicans "lost their minds." He said he is troubled by some of the actions of people in the United States in the name of religion.Anyone else getting tired of thinking “I’d vote for this actor / basketball player / comedian / businessperson / dude with whom I just shared an elevator / 8-year-old child / quick-witted mongrel / lamp post in a heartbeat over Bush”? Sigh. It seems like there’s almost no one who understands America less than the man currently charged with leading it.
"Religious people in general are so discriminatory against other people, and that really disturbs me," he said. "My idea of religion is we all love and respect. We all sin, but we still have common decency and respect for other people. So right now I'm struggling with my idea of what religion is."
He also said he supports gay marriage.
"I think if they want to get married, God bless them," Barkley said.
…"When you get elected to public office, you're supposed to represent everybody. Your job is not to take care of the rich or the poor or the black or the white. Your job is to take care of everybody."
(Hat tip Pam.)
Dear America, Wake the fuck up. Love, Shakespeare’s Sister
Mark, seriously pissing me off not because he’s wrong, but because he’s exactly right:
The death knell for our secular, balanced-power democracy will be sounded before a somnambulant, unconcerned, and flaccidly assenting silent majority. To pass off the final outrage, it will only be necessary to whip up the basest xenophobic terror. The Final Dismantling will be performed by bureaucrats promising liberty from a “new fascism” by imposing one. They will promise peace through war. They will promise freedom through arbitrary detention, and human rights through torture. They will label thoughtful discussion as treason, and careful analysis as unserious.What has him in such a state of despair? Our president, explaining that the ruling of a Federal District Court is wrong, because it does not address to his satisfaction—and according to his definition—“the world in which we live.” Our government, barring two American citizens from re-entering the country, because they refuse to consent to FBI interrogations in Pakistan—interrogations which violate their civil rights. Our Secretary of Defense referring to administration and war critics as appeasers of "a new type of fascism." And all the bloody rest of it.
Sound familiar? That’s because most of their work is already done.
I can’t imagine what it will take to jolt the sleepy, lackadaisical masses from their blissful ignorance, because if they wait to get outraged about the plans for massive detention centers until someone they know is actually relocated to one, it’s too late. If they wait to get outraged until the redistribution of wealth until they’ve lost their own home to foreclosure, it’s too late. If they wait to complain about dissenters being branded traitors until they object to something and find themselves at the blunt end of political marginalization, it’s too late. Nothing seems to matter to Americans until it directly affects them, and, by then, it’s almost always too late.
Instead, they will suffer all manner of indignity being imposed upon others to preserve themselves. Wiretapping other people without a warrant is fine. Holding other people indefinitely without access to an attorney or due process is fine. Torturing other people is fine. Maligning other people for dissent is fine. Disenfranchising other voters is fine. Rewarding corporations for moving jobs filled by other people offshore is fine. Destroying the environment for other generations is fine. Cutting federal funding for programs that benefit other people is fine. Denying equal rights to other people is fine. Using other people as a wedge issue is fine. Denying bodily autonomy to other people is fine. It’s all fair play as long as it’s not being done to me, and you tell me it’s keeping me safe and happy.
It’s all about me. What is perhaps most despicable about this attitude in America is that we are largely a nation of Christians (as we are constantly reminded by the most ostentatious adherents), a religion which has as its centerpiece the notion of personal sacrifice for, literally, everyone else, yet the majority of Christians seem to have drawn from the story of Jesus not the notion of self-sacrifice, but the notion that someone else will make the sacrifice for them. God sent his only son to die so that we might live forever, I was told week after week after week in church, my entire childhood, and as I look across the American landscape and see nothing but people willing to let others suffer and despair for their security, I can’t help but think that too many Christians have not learned to identify with the savior, but are instead quite content to sit back and be saved. They reaped the rewards of the Messiah’s death; might as well reap the rewards of the lashes on the backs of the prisoners at Gitmo, too. (And false rewards, at that.)
It’s all about me. There is no sense of an American community, and certainly not a global one. Americans look at those in worse circumstances than themselves and see not the myriad of ways to help, but instead breathe a sigh of relief—at least I’m not them. And when we’re not busy using the less fortunate as a way to bolster our own trembling sense of security, we hold them in contempt, and claim it’s because we resent the drain of resources they create, cloaking the reality that they remind us of our dereliction of duty toward our fellow citizens, and, worse yet, that they remind us what a thin line separates us from them.
It’s all about me. We still remain a dreadfully segregated nation, and much of the country shields its residents from even a passing familiarity with any alternative American experience to their own, leaving the majority of Americans incapable of comprehending how someone outside their race, sexual orientation, and particularly social class might arrive at a drastically different destination in life than they have. Knowing people who aren’t like us is the key to empathy, to caring about the struggles, blockades, and even the most basic circumstances of people who don’t share our individual experiences. People sniff at multiculturalism and shrug at the suggestion that international travel is a necessary experience to broaden our own isolationist horizons. We are actively discouraged, by omnipresent reassurances that “America is the best country in the world!” that we don’t need to experience other cultures because they have nothing to offer (and we are actively prevented from world travel by being provided with the shortest vacation times in the Western world). America is the center of the universe for many Americans—and often, not even the whole of America, but just their own region, state, town, neighborhood. Best place in the country in the best country in the world. Why leave, even for a day? Incuriosity. Ignorance. It’s all about my home, my experience, me.
It’s all about me. The American Dream is not, and has never been, that we collectively eradicate poverty, provide equal opportunities, and celebrate our shared success, but that each of us as individuals would achieve some sort of perfect destiny of wealth, health, and security. And always—obscured, inextricably—tied to that is the notion that for some to succeed, others must fail. The American Dream is a zero-sum game, and once I got mine, I don’t have to give a shit about everyone else who ain’t got theirs; in fact, it’s because they don’t that I’m so fortunate. Oh, but did I mention I got here on my own steam? It’s completely, irrationally schizophrenic, and it’s an intractable component of the American definition of success, to which we are all, subtly and overtly, encouraged to aspire.
It’s all about me. If it’s not directly affecting us, most Americans just don’t feel the need, or the obligation, to care.
Except it’s not all about me. “In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.” — Martin Niemoller, Lutheran pastor in Berlin, arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938; the Allied forces freed him seven years later.
By the time it affects you, it’s too late.
Put. That Coffee. Down.
Alec Baldwin is one of those actors that I should probably like more than I do. I've seen him in just a smattering of roles: the pre-Harrison Ford Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October; the dissolute movie star Bob Barringer in State and Main; an unfortunate turn as the iconic Lamont Cranston in The Shadow; a self-portrayal on The Simpsons. And, of course, his stirring performance as Mr. Conductor in Thomas and the Magic Railroad. I've always found Baldwin kind of slight, a little underwhelming. But for me, his entire career is redeemed and vindicated by the eight minutes or so he spends in a role especially written for him in the film version of David Mamet's testosterone fest, Glengarry Glen Ross. To put it succinctly:
Alec Baldwin's cameo scene from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross is a classic distillation of what the ideology of hard selling is all about: high pressure, shame, humiliation, competition, and the link between financial success and self worth.
Baldwin's character, the crisply-dressed and pitiless Blake, parachutes into a sleepy real estate office to threaten, berate, and otherwise motivate its hapless salesmen. His performance, fired by Mamet's dialogue, is truly a thing of beauty:
Blake: Put. That Coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers. (Levene scoffs) Do you think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown. I'm here from Mitch and Murray. And I'm here on a mission of mercy. Your name's Levene?
Levene (Jack Lemmon): Yeah.
Blake: You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?
Eight minutes of pure venom, delivered with a passionate contempt.
Moss (Ed Harris): I don't have to listen to this shit.
Blake: You certainly don't, pal. 'Cause the good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonights sit. (Pause) Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, you are shit, hit the bricks, pal and beat it, 'cause you are going out.
Levene: The leads are weak.
Blake: "The leads are weak." Fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years -
Moss: What's your name?
Blake: Fuck you, that's my name. You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove a eighty thousand dollar BMW. That's my name.
Brings a smile to my face every time.
My question (and I do have one): Is there an actor whom you generally discount who yet managed to utterly floor you (in a good way) with a performance?
(You know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes cross-posts to sell real estate.)
Crumble
May 17: “[T]he first signs of decay are starting. … Subtle things, that no one else seems to notice, as they happen ever so slowly. The schools and the library and other public buildings aren’t quite as clean, quite as kept-up, as they used to be. The streets aren’t quite as clean. The potholes and the cracked sidewalks don’t get fixed as quickly, or at all. There are more houses around town that need fresh paint, more vacant retail spaces. Little things. Little degrees of difference. But they’re everywhere, when you really look. They’re the little things that indicate that salaries aren’t keeping up with inflation, that local and state governments don’t have the funds they used to. Belt-tightening everywhere. The house can go another year without paint. The City Hall can go another year, or two, without tuckpointing. We can get rid of a couple of sanitation trucks, give up a couple of salt trucks in the winter. We don’t need two toll booths onto the interstate open; one is fine. Little things that no one really notices, to stave off the rot for as long as we can. Little things that happen in communities like mine before crime starts to go up in communities that aren’t as fortunate, communities that don’t have any give in their belts to begin with. … [We] need someone to care about putting money—and attention—back into America again.”
Today: “You know how to tell when a nation is in decline? Just look at its infrastructure. A society on the rise is marked by trains that run on time and well, highways that are a pleasure to drive upon, and basic services that work well. That's not happening in the U.S. anymore. Our pal RJ Eskow details: ‘The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.’ The U.S. is in decline, ladies and germs, and that decline has been hastened by the people in power for the past six years.”
Hastened by the war in Iraq, which was supposed to pay for itself. My governor, Mitch Daniels, who was the White House Budget Director during the run-up to the war, asserted the war would be an “affordable endeavor,” and rejected as “very, very high” the chief White House economic adviser’s estimate that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. The war has already cost us well over $200 billion.
Hasted by out-of-control wasteful government spending, with Congress having approved a record $29 billion in earmarks for 2006, including crap like $591,017,000 for eight additional C-130J aircraft, even though a “2004 report from the office of the inspector general of the Department of Defense rated the J model unsatisfactory and cited deficiencies in, among other things, its defensive systems,” and $1,300,000 for berry research in Alaska.
Hastened by tax cuts, 70% of the savings generated by which benefit the top 2% (those making $200,000 or more) of taxpayers. Bush’s tax cuts cost the government over $75 billion in revenue from those making $100,000 or more. (See chart below.)
(Click on image for larger view.)
Hasted by the increasing disparity in wealth between individuals and corporations. (See chart below, via Eric Hopp.)
“[W]ages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation's gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as ‘the golden era of profitability’.”
Additionally, corporations share significantly less of the tax revenue burden than they used to. “In 1965, individual taxpayers paid 66% of all US income taxes, and corporations paid about a third. But by 2000, the corporate share had dropped to 18%, just about half what it used to be.”
And it has fallen since. TomPaine: “The treasury department reports the federal government collected $184 billion in corporate income taxes in 2004 (up from $ 132 billion in 2003)—or just 9.6 percent of total taxes collected.”
In less than 40 years, corporations’ tax share fell from 31% to less than 10%. Meanwhile, the minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 1998, and “the median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation,” even though productivity (and corporate profits) continued to rise steadily over the same period.
The average American worker is being robbed blind by a massive redistribution of wealth orchestrated by a government that leaves itself wallowing in deficits and unable to sustain the infrastructure on which those Americans depend. The nation is crumbling. If we continue down this path, forget drowning the government in a bathtub; we won’t even be able to afford the tub.
Sic 'Em, Keith!
Keith Olbermann goes after Rummy like a pitbull. Transcript at the link, if you can't watch. Here's just a snippet.
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute… I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed, "confused" or "immoral."
Thus forgive me for reading Murrow in full: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear - one, of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of un-reason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men; not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were - for the moment - unpopular."
And so, good night and good luck.
Question of the Day
What's your favorite scary movie?
I don't get scared by horror movies, slasher films, thrillers...although I love them. (I find movies like An Inconvenient Truth a lot more chilling.) My favorite at the moment is probably 28 Days Later.
(Sorry for the light posting today, Shakers. I'll be back tomorrow with a little more vim and vigor.)
Caption This Photo
President Bush walks away from the 'New Birth Brass Band' before meeting with local residents and volunteers on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006 in New Orleans, La. Bush is visiting the Gulf Coast to mark the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Next Stop Iran
If the collection of warmongers shrieking about the necessity of a preemptive strike get their way.
Poor Wee Husble
Mr. Shakes is home with the stomach flu today. The only thing that’s making him feel better is some furry cuddling. (Yes, he’s wearing a Dark Wraith Forums t-shirt, because, per his just-issued statement: "I'm the king oof cool." He has also informed me he doesn't say "oof," but "euf.")
It’s a freckle explosion!
See, here’s the thing…
Most people aren’t dumb. There are a lot of ignorant people, and there are certainly, especially in politics, a lot of people who like to play dumb, but most of them aren’t. And when they play dumb, what they’re really doing is treating us like we’re dumb, which is why we should always look behind the innocent façades and the claims of gosh-darn-shucks-stupidity, because when we do, we find things like the Downing Street Memo, and Dick Armitage’s signature on the PNAC letter, and George Allen’s long history with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group which was created from the mailing list of the old white supremacist White Citizens Councils and has been noted as becoming increasingly “radical and racist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the CCC as a hate group.
Asked whether Allen supports or deplores the CCC, John Reid, his communications director pleaded ignorance. "I am unaware of the group you mention or their agenda and because we have no record of the Senator having involvement with them I cannot offer you any opinion on them," Reid told me in an e-mail response.
In 1996, when Governor Allen entered the Washington Hilton Hotel to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, he strode to a booth at the entrance of the exhibition hall festooned with two large Confederate flags--a booth operated by the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), at the time a co-sponsor of CPAC. After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer.Yeah. There’s a lot more at the link.
People like George Allen—and George Bush—aren’t fools. They just like to play us for fools. The soft bigotry of low expectations indeed.
If we learn anything from this reign of heinous miscreants, let it be that if something whiffs of shit, that’s probably because it’s emanating from someone who’s full of it.
Recycled Cronies: Second Verse, Same as the First!
Total frigging dickhead and partisan wanker Kenneth Tomlinson, whose disgraced ousting from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting after rules violations (trying to turn PBS into a GOP mouthpiece) wasn’t seen as a bad thing by the White House, but evidence that he was fit to be appointed instead as the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (which oversees government broadcasts to foreign countries), has now made a mockery of that post as well, by using his office to run a horse racing operation and putting a friend on the payroll. He also “repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.” What a charmer.
A spokeswoman for the White House, Emily Lawrimore, said President Bush continued to support Mr. Tomlinson’s renomination.Of course he does.
Armitage Admits to Being Plame Leaker
At least, the bloke who leaked it to Novak:
Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday.A forthcoming book, Hubris, the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War’, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, reports that “Mr. Armitage told a few State Department colleagues that he might have been the leaker whose identity was being sought,” which explains the timing of Armitage’s admission.
…Mr. Armitage did not return calls for comment. But the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage have said he has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.
In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.So Armitage was privy to a memo written by the Under-Secretary of State, after Libby (probably at the behest of Cheney, though he claims otherwise) requested a “fact-finding mission” (ahem) on Valerie Plame.
Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby’s inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.
The book quotes Carl W. Ford Jr., then head of the intelligence and research bureau at the State Department, as saying that Mr. Armitage had told him, “I may be the guy who caused this whole thing,’’ and that he regretted having told the columnist more than he should have.All just a big mistake, eh? That’s quite a convenient goof for a partisan hack who is a former foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush and one of the signers of the Project for a New American Century’s letter to Bill Clinton in 1998, urging the removal of Saddam Hussein. Considering that the whole purpose of outing Valerie Plame was to discredit her husband, Joe Wilson, who was challenging the administration’s case for war in Iraq, I find it spectacularly coincidental that Armitage made such a colossally convenient mistake in telling bigmouth Novak “more than he should have” about an issue that served to undermine a key administration critic on the war.
Funny how Armitage had to “regret being a total boob” during Iran-Contra, too.
Liberal Oasis has a good piece on What We Know About PlameGate, and Taylor March notes: “Armitage now advises John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign (TimesSelect link). I would say that McCain loses credibility on national security issues when he takes counsel from someone who has twice admitted to leaking national security secrets (the other being Iran-Contra).” I would say that, too.
President Bush Is Doing a Heck of a Job in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
As reasonable conservative I have been invited by this very open-minded blog to crosspost this piece from my very modest blog, which presents the conservative view of the job President Bush has done in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I hope you will be persuaded by my extremely reasonable arguments:
President Bush is doing a heck of a job in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but the liberal media won't give him credit. Just as they ignore all of the successes in Iraq, the media refuses to acknowledge that all of the amazing progress on the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina has been due to the President's remarkable leadership. From the way the glass-half-empty pundits spin the situation there you would never know how great things are actually going. A year ago much of New Orleans was under water but now it is as dry as any other American city. After Katrina there was no electricity, except for a brief moment when the President gave his speech in Jackson Square, but now only a year later power has been restored to more than 50% of residents. Before Katrina many people lived in ramshackle houses in some of the poorest areas of New Orleans, but those hovels are steadily being replaced with shiny new trailers and mobile homes. What homes were not destroyed have skyrocketed in value bringing potential financial windfalls to their owners. And the person who perhaps lost the most because of Hurricane Katrina, Trent Lott, whose 19th century mansion was reduced to rubble, is well on his way to rebuilding a new and bigger mansion as soon as his lawsuit against his insurance company makes it through the courts. All in all there is no denying that things are trending upward for people in the Gulf region.
President Bush campaigned for office as a "compassionate conservative" and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina gave him the opportunity to show us exactly what that meant. Compassionate conservativism, which I once described as "deeply sympathizing with peoples' problems and sincerely hoping that private enterprise will be able to do something about them," has left the Gulf region stronger and more self-reliant than it was before Hurricane Katrina. Despite the nay-saying of critics, many local people were genuinely touched by the sympathy the President showed as he toured the area this week and his message of hope that someone would help them rebuild.
Everything that has happened there is the result of President Bush's estimable leadership from Day One. From the moment he heard that there might be a crisis looming, the President remained calm, steady and resolute. He didn't immediately leap up in a panic and draw up complicated unworkable plans to give the appearance of doing something. Just as he took a moment to reflect when he first heard about the attack on the World Trade Center, after being briefed on Hurricane Katrina, the President retreated to his Crawford, Texas, ranch where he could contemplate in an environment that was most conducive to clear thinking, taking only one brief break to appear at a previously scheduled political fundraiser, and then he delegated all responsibility to people working for him. And as the President showed in Iraq, he does not like outlining elaborate plans that only hamstring the ability of people to react spontaneously to events and remain flexible. Planning requires the ability to predict the future, which everyone knows is impossible.
Other Presidents might have immediately mobilized the National Guard or sent in FEMA to deal with the approaching hurricane. Think how many lives would have been lost with that approach! Just as he stood up to Pentagon generals who urged him to send in more troops to Iraq, which might have been killed, the President resisted the pleas of local officials to send in large numbers of government personnel prematurely, which would have resulted in many unnecessary casualties. Instead, he patiently waited until it was safe and sent in a more maneuverable smaller force that could react more quickly and with greater precision than a large, lumbering force. He knew that ultimately it was best to let local officials handle the crisis without too much meddling from the Federal government.
Some conservatives criticized President Bush for the promises he made in his speech in Jackson Square to do whatever was necessary and spend whatever money was needed to rebuild New Orleans. What they didn't know at the time was that the President actually had no intention of spending a great deal of money all at once. A year later most of the money he promised has not even arrived yet, giving the people there a chance to set themselves up on their own two feet first. This strategy has had the effect of weaning a region that was once overly dependent on government handouts from the crutch of government largesse. Meanwhile, much of the rebuilding is being handled not by corrupt and inefficient government bureaucracies but by private enterprise, which has been lured to the area with such incentives as no-bid contracts.
There has also been criticism of the deliberate pace of the clean-up. Some impatient people believe that we should have rushed into putting everything back the way it was without analyzing the situation first. By taking things slowly it gives us time to consider whether it might be preferable not to rebuild certain neighborhoods, especially the poorer ones. Perhaps a smaller, more compact New Orleans would work better. Some are even suggesting that we think about whether we should even rebuild New Orleans at all, especially since it was always a socio-economic drag on the rest of Louisiana anyway. We might also think about moving it somewhere safer, far away from water, perhaps to a place like like Kansas. Instead of seeing Hurricane Katrina as a negative thing, some people are looking at it as an opportunity.
Regrettably, some people are also trying to claim that racism had something to do with the response after Hurricane Katrina. While some people might want to inject race into everything, the President, who is as color-blind as a bat, doesn't see the world in terms of such categories as black and white or Shia and Sunni. He sees the world only in terms of self-reliant hard workers and lazy and shiftless people who depend on the government for everything.
The most important legacy of Hurricane Katrina is that President Bush proved once and for all that people cannot depend on the government to solve their problems and that the best kind of government is very limited government or even no government at all. That is the same lesson he is teaching the people of Iraq today. FEMA's response to the disaster was a vindication of what conservatives have been saying for years--that big government can't do anything right. Ultimately, the American people are going to be better off knowing that they cannot depend on the government to save them. If the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi coast do manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and rebuild, they will be much better off the next time a hurricane destroys everything they have, knowing that no one will save them but themselves.
Crossposted at Jon Swift
Blogswarm Update
I'm still updating the Katrina blogswarm. I've been adding links to the NOLA blogs, and I'm about halfway through the list. I'll continue to update through the day. I really encourage you to check them out and read some of the personal experiences of these bloggers.
Question of the Day
What’s the best film you’ve seen so far this year?
(To all those who will answer Little Miss Sunshine, I’m tres jealous you’ve seen it already. It still isn’t playing in our local theater. Stinks!)
Daily Round-up
Shakes: Katrina Blogswarm
Shakes: Two-minute nostalgia sublime
Shakes: Commander Codpiece Goes to Vietnam
Shakes: McCain Hearts Bob Jones U
Shakes: President Photo Op
Waveflux: Manhood, baby
Shakes: Ode to the Weatherpeople
Shakes: I hate to say I told you so…
Shakes: Saddam is from Mars…
Shakes: Put your mad brush clearin’ skillz to use, bitch.
Waveflux: Defending bad judgment
Shakes: Rumsfeld is a maniac
Shakes: Caption This Photo
Tart: Le Royally Screwed
Shakes: Looking Back
Shakes: News from Shakes Manor
Shakes: Disaster in the making
Shakes: Tip-toe to the tipping point…
I Blame Al Gore for This
You know how Gore keeps saying (and I keep repeating, because I am the GoreBot 3000) that his most fervent desire is to raise awareness about global warming so that no matter which party wins in 2008, they’ve got to address the issue, because the public will demand it?
To wit, my Republican Senator Dick Lugar:
Who is this radical politician named Dick Lugar? Reported to be a quiet, solid conservative from quiet, solid Indiana, Lugar came out today with an aggressive plan to make the nation more energy independent.Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monster. I do declare! That there is a Republican Senator not only saying we need radical steps to address the energy crisis, but tying the energy crisis to our foreign policy.
And he had the temerity to criticize our political leadership on the energy question, which may seem a bit odd since he is a GOP senator from Indiana.
But Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made it clear in a speech at Purdue University that the nation is in danger on the energy front and that "advancements in American energy security have been painfully slow during 2006, and political leadership has been defensive rather than pro-active."
Was he talking about his own party--and President Bush? What has been done so far (energy bills) are "small steps," he said. The senator wants to be bold, because he says that is what is required to protect our national security.
Lugar proposes expanding ethanol production to 100 billion gallons by 2025, put a $45 a barrel floor under the price of oil, and require one-quarter of all US filling stations to have E85 pumps (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline), while also requiring all new US cars to be E85-ready. He claims these steps would save 6.5 million barrels of oil (or 1/3 of current use) a day.
Now, I’m not sold on his plan for a couple of reasons, mainly because my general understanding is that we’d have a hard time growing enough product to convert into the amount of ethanol his plan would require. I’m sure those who are more hip to the specifics of ethanol production will put in their much-appreciated $0.02 in comments. But wev. The point is not that his plan is spectacular, but that we’re reaching the tipping point, slowly but surely. And Lugar is placing the responsibility for not moving more quickly solely at the administration’s dragging feet, by pointing out that we have the financial, industrial, and technological ability to get this shit done, but “What we are lacking is coordination and political will.” Snap, Senator.
News from Shakes Manor
Last night, lying in bed before falling asleep, Mr. Shakes and I were playing “Exchange a Letter.” Ps had to be replaced with Gs.
Shakes: Nice genis.
Mr. Shakes: Thanks, I like your googies.
Shakes: You just said that you like my poopies. Ha ha! You like my poopies!
Mr. Shakes: I meant boobies! Argh. I like your niggles!
Shakes: No, you like my poopies!
Mr. Shakes: Shut ug.
Looking Back
Throughout the week, Crooks and Liars is going to be posting videos as Hurricane Katrina unfolded last year. The first clip is up, from Countdown, August 30, 2005.
Dude, No Way!
I can't believe they caught Warren Jeffs! I thought he'd be in hiding forever. I mean, those Mormon fundies don't tend to mess around when it comes to concealing their 40-wife-having, thirteen-year-old-girl-marrying rape accomplice sect leaders. But he was pulled over for a traffic violation yesterday near Las Vegas, and now he is, as they say in France, Le Royally Screwed.
Jeffs wishes to inform you, however, that for what it's worth, he blames the black people.
So, these prisons...they're coed, right? Right, guys?
Caption This Photo
U.S. President George W. Bush (R) receives a blessing as he takes part in a church service commemorating the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana August 29, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)
In other news, St. Louis Cathedral was struck by lightning and burned down today…
LOL!
Fucking hell, the balls on this guy:
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday accused critics of the Bush administration's Iraq and counterterrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism."I don’t even know what to say. It’s doubleplusgood, bitchez!
In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration's critics as suffering from "moral or intellectual confusion" about what threatens the nation's security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.
In remarks to several thousand veterans at the American Legion's national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.
"I recount this history because once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism," he said.
Defending bad judgment
Kevin Drum gets it wrong regarding the media's walkback on John Mark Karr:
Look. Any news channel that didn't cover JMK 24/7 would have seen its audience defect en masse to a channel that did. Any media star that ignored the story would have seen the public stampede to a competitor who was covering it. Blaming the media is a little disingenuous, no?
Ah, no. Look (to employ Drum's tough-guy realism): to give the media a pass for reducing news judgment to the act of wetting a finger and sticking it in the air is to ignore the same practice when the press corps ignores, en masse, stories of genuine national concern. Just because bad judgment is understandable - de rigeur, even - hardly makes it excusable.
Now if Drum's intent is to criticize the media for employing a "shocked, shocked!" stance on JMK worthy of Captain Renault, that's another thing altogether. But far from that, it seems that Drum seeks to defend the press for being blind to any consideration apart from ratings. No?
Related: Shakes' post on Karr and the media.
(Cross-posted.)
The Lowe Down
"It's so devastating, it's so sad. It looks like it happened last month. It's so depressing." — Rob Lowe on the “still decimated Ninth Ward of New Orleans.” (Lowe is there shooting a movie; he was offered Canada or New Orleans and took a pay cut to go to NOLA so he could help bring business back there.)
Aside: Does anyone else consider it the height of bitter irony that debris clean-up is still unfinished a year later, under the leadership of a president who spends his plentiful vacation time clearing brush?
Saddam and South Park
Take this for whatever it’s worth, considering the dubious sourcing—although I must admit I don’t find it particularly difficult to believe.
DEPOSED tyrant Saddam Hussein has been taunted in custody with repeated screenings of a South Park film lampooning him as a gay nymphomaniac.
British tabloid The Sun reported that US Marines have been forcing the former Iraqi dictator to watch an offensive caricature of himself in low-brow animated film South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut – on repeat.
The film was banned in Iraq when it opened seven years ago, not least for its depiction of Hussein as a flamboyant and libidinous homosexual.
In the film, Hussein’s evil counterpart is none other than Satan, with whom he shares an erotic relationship.
Hey Satan, I got some new luggage for our trip up to Earth. Let's fuck to celebrate!
Matt Stone says the Marines told him they were torturing Saddam with the film, and he “boasted the story at the Edinburgh International Television Festival,” then the story was picked up by The Sun. As I said, thin sourcing, but nonetheless believable, considering some of the stuff going on over there.
Supposing for the moment that it’s true, what do you think? Acceptable? Unacceptable? In an abstract sense, I find it completely hilarious, but in the real world with real people—even heinous despots—I’m fairly certain this would fall under cruel and unusual.
Huh
No DNA match in Ramsey case. What was it I said almost two weeks ago, when saying it looked like Karr was just an insane crackpot? Oh yeah: “The Report First Ask Questions Later paradigm of the modern media is dreadful, simply dreadful. They've evidently learned nothing from their shameful complicity in taking a nation to war under the same flawed premises.” Way to go, media. Again.
Ode to the Weatherpeople
You let us know when we need to take a sweater, or an umbrella, just in case. You let us know whether we should hold off on watering the lawn and washing the car, whether we should stock up on canned goods and make sure the snowblower’s in working order. And when all the rest of us head indoors to escape the rain, the sleet, the hail, the wind—that’s when you finally get to leave the studio, sent into the inclement weather to give your report on impending storms the ultimate veracity. “100 mph winds” doesn’t mean anything without seeing your yellow parka nearly ripped off your body. You risk your own warmth, dryness, safety, and pride to protect us—and get good ratings for your employer. So it’s no wonder you’re all a little nuts. (Via Recon.) The first one on the list is just priceless.
Close runner-up: Harris K. Telemacher
Manhood, baby
Meet Ronnie Coleman. Professional bodybuilder, eight-time Mr. Olympia. By necessity, the guy is roughly the size of a Ford F-150. This weekend, I ran across a video of Ronnie bench pressing a pair of 200 pound dumbbells - for reps, mind you, not just a one-time max - and was awestruck. I also bench press with dumbbells, but you can be dead certain that the DBs I use don't weigh 200 pounds.
I am impressed by Ronnie Coleman: his confidence, his application, his mastery of his sport. There are some who say that Ronnie's...you know...on the juice. I shouldn't be surprised - bodybuilding is rife with supplement use and abuse - but that's not what comes to mind just now when I see Ronnie doing these reps. What comes to mind is this: "Ronnie Coleman is a man, baby."
Meet Ming Tsai. Big-time celebrity chef, noted restaurateur. Not the size of a pickup truck, even though he works around food all day, every day. Every weekend, I watch him dominate his stage of a kitchen, demonstrating master recipes that blend Eastern and Western sensibilities. Food becomes art and performance in his hands. Ming comes off as both a self-assured chef and a regular guy who genuinely enjoys the gustatory pleasures. Additionally, he's almost annoyingly good-looking.
I envy Ming Tsai: his confidence, his dedication, his mastery of his art. There is a voice in the back of my head that discounts the whole celebrity chef phenomenon as not only irredeemably silly but a sign of the coming Apocalypse, but I don't hear that voice when I watch Ming in action. What I hear is this: "Ming Tsai is a man, baby."
(Cross-posted, baby...)
President Photo Op
New Orleans—On the eve of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s strike here, President Bush returned to the devastated region on Monday promising to continue federal assistance and, with his presidency still under the shadow of the slow response to the storm, eagerly pointed out signs of progress in reconstructing the Gulf Coast.Via The Carpetbagger Report, here’s the reality on the ground, as opposed to the fantasyland Bush lives in where toilets in yards are an optimistic sign and unicorn piss is the magic elixir that will fix everything:
…In an event with echoes of his prime-time speech in Jackson Square here last September, Mr. Bush spoke in a working-class neighborhood in Biloxi against a backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. But just a few feet away, outside the scene captured by the camera, stood gutted houses with wires dangling from ceilings. A tattered piece of crime-scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet sat on its side in the grass.
* Less than half of the city's pre-storm population of 460,000 has returned, putting the population at roughly what it was in 1880.
* Nearly a third of the trash has yet to be picked up.
* Sixty percent of homes still lack electricity.
* Seventeen percent of the buses are operational.
* Half of the physicians have left, and there is a shortage of 1,000 nurses.
* Six of the nine hospitals remain closed.
* Sixty-six percent of public schools have reopened.
* A 40 percent hike in rental rates, disproportionately affecting black and low-income families.
* A 300 percent increase in the suicide rate.
Get with the program, Bush, you fucking nitwit.
More from Blah3 and Brilliant at Breakfast.
McCain the Douche
Pam has the lowdown on Senator McCain's latest possible appeal to the Christian Supremacists: he's considering speaking at the odious Bob Jones University, which he roundly (and deservedly) criticized during the 2000 campaign. But having integrity didn't get him in the White House last time, so he's ditched it.
BJU's student handbook says "Loyalty to Christ results in separated living. Dishonesty, lewdness, sensual behavior, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversion of any kind, pornography, illegal use of drugs, and drunkenness—all are clearly condemned by God's word and prohibited here." The campus bans all Abercrombie & Fitch logos because it has "shown an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness in their promotions."And, lest anyone forget, Bob Jones refused to admit any blacks until 1971, and only then married blacks until 1975, and then forbade interracial dating until 2000. So it's super extra cool that McCain, with his multi-racial family, would consider hanging out with those bozos just to get a few votes.
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Bush Goes to Vietnam
President George W. Bush has famously never been to Vietnam -- instead he spent some of that war keeping the skies over Texas safe from the Viet Cong. But now Curious George will finally visit Vietnam, albeit almost 40 years after John Kerry got there.Yeesh. Godspeed, Commander Codpiece.
In mid-November, Hanoi will host the APEC Summit -- the Dear Leader promised last year that he would go. In fact, the Vietnamese have been freeing dissidents in advance of Bush's visit. Gee, do you suppose he'll be sellin' them some of that Iraqi-style deee-mocracy?
(Crossposted at AlterNet PEEK.)
Question of the Day
If you had the opportunity to make President Bush sit and listen to the things that any one person could tell him for 15 minutes, who would you choose to try to enlighten, persuade, condemn, or scream at him?
I can think of a whole lot of people, starting with the man who should have been president, Mr. Al Gore, but in the end I’d be stingy and choose myself. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let loose.
Apologies
Sorry I went AWOL, Shakers. We had another huge storm and were without power again for the last four hours. I’ve updated the blogswarm round-up below—my apologies to everyone who had to wait to get included.
(And now I’ve got to get off the computer again, because another storm seems imminent. Just FYI—and I’ll update the blogswarm again in the morning. Thanks so very much to everyone who participated.)
Katrina: One Year Later
UPDATE: I'm moving this back to the top for a bit. The round-up continues to grow, and I've added some stuff to the end of the post.
Today, there are hurricane warnings in Florida as the president makes his thirteenth trip to the Gulf Coast since it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina one year ago. He isn’t planning to make any new aid announcements or policy proposals, nor is he planning to spend much time with people most affected by the storm and its aftermath. He plans to give an address to “persuade local residents and doubters elsewhere that he remains committed to seeing the region rebuilt better than before.” He will spend most of his time in Mississippi, rather than “harder-hit, less-recovered New Orleans,” and after his lunch with community leaders in Biloxi, he will “walk through a damaged neighborhood and visit a Gulfport company that builds and repairs boats.” Today will be a day for photo ops.
Today is not about the recovery of the Gulf Coast, not really. Because even though one year later, the “job of clearing debris left by the storm remains unfinished, and has been plagued by accusations of price gouging,” and even though one year later, “tens of thousands of families still live in trailers or mobile homes, with no indication of when or how they will be able to obtain permanent housing,” and even though one year later, “important decisions about rebuilding and improving flood defenses have been delayed” and “little if anything has been done to ensure the welfare of the poor in a rebuilt New Orleans,” and even though one year later, huge numbers of people are still displaced, the president doesn’t believe in the significance of this anniversary, or pointing to it in urgency to get local and state officials, who he blames for the delays in rebuilding, to get things done. What today is really about is the recovery of Bush’s image.
But this catastrophic mess is his to own. It was the finest moment for Bush Conservatism, which advocates a social Darwinism that first leaves people without the means to evacuate and then allows those on higher (and dryer) ground to blame the drowning masses for their own desperate circumstance, which advocates the appointment of people to government specifically because of their disdain for its basic duties on behalf of those most in need of its service, which advocates “starving the beast” to make the federal government as effective as a tiger without its fangs, which advocates cronyism that finds useless, incompetent twits in charge of a massive emergency operation.
Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.
Today, in spite of Bush’s desire to separate himself from the shining glory of his most precious policies, we remember how he failed Americans, and failed America.
Blogswarm Round-up:
Royally Kranked / I’m Not One to Blog, But… / Night Bird’s Fountain / Amberglow at MetaFilter / Fluxview / Changing Places / Grumpy Old Man / Morning Martini / What Do I Know? / A Blog Around the Clock / After the Bridge / Swampytad / Rusty Idols / The Science Pundit / Harp and Sword / Mike the Mad Biologist / Momusfire / The Crazy Bird / The Psychotic Patriot (and here) / Truth, Justice & Peace / Stephenson Strategies / Konagod / Paul Krugman (provided by C&L) / BlondeSense / Driftglass / Gideon Starorzewski / The Talent Show / Mike’s Neighborhood / Pen-Elayne on the Web / Mockingbird’s Medley / Bark Bark Woof Woof / Progressive Purls / Booman Tribune / TalkLeft / The Intersection / Stranger Fruit / Poor Impulse Control / Quaker Agitator (and here) / Blue Gal / Talking Points Memo / Hughes for America / Brilliant at Breakfast / Aetiology / Legal Fiction / 300 Dollar Wonder / Drifting Through the Grift / Property of a Lady / HuffPo / Corpus Callosum / The Unknown Candidate / The Tattered Coat / 1115 / The Last Duchess / Facing South / True Blue Liberal / Demagogue / The Daily Background / Think Progress / Thoughts from an Empty Head / Afarensis / Life and Times of NotSoccer Mom / Thoughts from Kansas / Blanton’s and Ashton’s / State of the Day / Article of Faith / The Rude Pundit / The Katrinacrat Blog / The Democratic Daily / A DC Birding Blog / Zen Comix / Liberal Catnip / Firedoglake / First Draft / Left I on the News / The Left Coaster / The Garlic / Puffs and White China Dogs / Linkmeister / Bitty’s Back Porch / Thinking Meat / Lab Cat / Notes Toward Something / The Aristocrats / Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge / The Evil Petting Zoo / This Space for Rent / Pushing Rope / And This Too Shall Pass… / 2 Political Junkies / Balls and Walnuts / Attempts / Globalclashes / Terra Sigillata / Club Lefty / Off the Broiler / The Left End of the Dial / Dynamics of Cats / Man Eegee / Kevin Wolf / Pam’s House Blend / The Brad Blog / The Moderate Voice / The Reaction / TBogg / Blah3 / AlterNet Video Blog / Mahablog / Liberal Oasis / The Carpetbagger Report / Nihilix / Thou Shall Not Suck / The Blue Voice / Efficacy / Media Needle / Welcome to Pottersville / The American Street / Set Free / 2millionthweblog / A Frolic of My Own / Adrastos / Adventures in the Big Easy / After the Levees at TPM Café / American Zombie / Anima Mundi / Appetites / Ashley Morris / Beyond Katrina / b.rox / Blagueur / Blogging New Orleans / Chill But Real / Chris’ Blog / Cliff’s Crib / Confederacy of Dunces USA / Cooking with Herb St. Absinthe / Creative Display / Da Po’ Blog / Dangerblond / Dangermond / DawnSinger / Doctor Daisy / Emily Metzgar / Flood and Loathing / Gentilly Girl / Gulf Sails / Gumbo Pie / Habitat for Urbanity / Howie Luvzus / Humid City v2.3 / Evil Mommy / Humid Haney Rant / I Pee Sunshine and Flowers / Library Chronicles / Lifestyles of the Easily Obsessed / FEMA, Katrina, and Other Bad Words / Maitri’s VatulBlog / Metroblogging New Orleans / Michael Homan / Miss Malaprop / Missing New Orleans / Moldy City / New Orleans Slate / Nix Bits / NOLA Nik / Old Hammond Highway Bridge / Our New Orleans Saints / People Get Ready / Ray in New Orleans / Saturday Knights / Sean P. Clark / Slimbolala / Spastic Robot / Suburbia / Sung a Lot of Songs / Still Life with Soup Can / Suspect Device / Sturtle / Thanks, Katrina / The G Bitch Spot / The Garden of Irks and Delights / The Katrina Memo / The Periphery / The Third Battle of New Orleans / Tim’s Nameless Blog / Topping from the Bottom / The Velvet Rut / Vicky Moos / Voices of New Orleans / Wet Bank Guide / Yat Pundit
Watch Us and Them and Short People, care of Joe Max.
Oddjob points to today's front page story in the Boston Globe with the note, “It does indeed logically stand to reason that if one elects into office people who don't believe the government has any real business existing (beyond the bare necessities of a standing military) that disaster relief will be handled horrifically. Garbage in, garbage out...”
A year ago, I did a round-up of bloggers who were making the point that Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success, an observation the Democrats still desperately need to make clearly and unabashedly. Below are some of those excerpts, again.
Rob Salkowitz: "It’s moments like this when you need a party in power that actually believes in the affirmative power of government to help its citizens, rather than the party that sees government’s role as protecting the property of the well-off from the predations of the underclass. It’s when the true ugly soul of American conservatism is borne out for what it is: a rationalization of selfishness and the hysterical denial of community. America is about to see what happens when the government is staffed by people appointed to their jobs precisely for their disdain for the whole notion of policy in the public interest. It’s won’t be pretty."
Driftglass: "Take a good look at the news, Republicans. A looooong fucking look, because at no real risk to yourself (which we know is just how you like it) you have been given a great and rare gift for which others have paid a terrible price…[I]n New Orleans you have been vouchsafed a glimpse into the future of your deepest wettest dreams."
The Green Knight: "Neo-conservative theory has run headlong into reality, and let me tell you the theory is wrong, folks. The authorities are, right before your eyes, sacrificing the lives of your fellow Americans on the altar of their vile social programming theory. Better for people to die than get help. Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. This is your government. This is the logical outcome of all that neocon Thatcherite management-theory bullshit that has hypnotized the Western world for the past decade. This is Hell on Earth."
PZ Meyers: "It is also obvious that there is one huge, dominant factor that has been operating over decades to culminate now, in this problem and many others: the Republican party. The party of know-nothings, incompetence, greed, bigotry, religious intolerance, and irresponsibility. We now have the government they wanted, and that we allowed them to have."
Rexroth’s Daughter: "I feel some hope that this catastrophe will bring to light the need for an efficient, compassionate, progressive government, that 2006 will restore us to congressional leadership. But I am full of despair that the illumination has come once again on the backs of the poor and destitute."
Blue Girl in a Red State: "I'm dreaming that there are millions of people fed up with this administration. That finally millions of people on both the left and right are fed up with our lack of leadership. I'm dreaming that millions of people want to put a stop to our country's downward spiral."
There's more at the link.
