The Meditations of Pholkhero

Misconceptions of god

2005-11-01T11:32:00.000-05:00

[ed. note: I use 'God' to denote the common, Judeo-Christian deity; i use 'god' to denote my own belief, which views god as the Ultimate Source, the Godhead, the One, the True, the Good and the Beautiful]

There is a common misconception in American culture about God. Most Americans believe in a God that is a paternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, benevolent watcher from afar, residing in Heaven, judging us all worthy of salvation. This is false.

God does not exist in a far-off place, detached and removed from us nor can he be found in any one book. God is not a separate being; god is the inner essence of all things. God exists within all people, in your family, your neighbors and your enemies. God resides in each and every sparrow and fish, plant and animal, in every mountain and ocean. God is here, all around us, everyday. All things and events in this universe, all things that we are witness to, are the infinite manifestations of god, and the souls of men are no different. It is in this way that god is our own true mode of being, and our most authentic selves.

Once the individual has reached this level of understanding, he has achieved a mystical union between his self and god and recognizes the universal nature of the universe. This recognition is the highest form of Freedom for the individual. (Yet, god is not dependent upon our recognition; god existed before humanity evolved and will exist after we have passed on.) However, to recognize that humanity is part of a larger whole, you must also recognize that we are more than our individual selves.

It also means that our true authentic selves are not our individual egos, but are a general self (i.e., god), common to us all, and that our identity should not be sought merely in the individual, but also in the whole, the “one-ness” that is the universe and god. It seems to me that all great religious traditions can be traced back to this original experience by their founders or reformers and that a truly religious person should strive after this holistic sense of unity.

Gitmo, meet Camp Amtrak

2005-10-13T11:05:00.000-04:00

But what did not make it into the tape or national attention was that Davis is just one of more than nearly a thousand people who have suffered in a horrific place the police call "Camp Amtrak," an improvised jail in what used to be the New Orleans bus terminal.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges such as breaking curfew or public intoxication, housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing them through a court process that forces most into working on clean-up projects at police facilities, according to numerous interviews and documents obtained by TNS.
At the converted Greyhound terminal, which now serves as a different kind of way station, no passengers arrive with luggage. Instead, police bring people in and book them at what used to be a ticket counter. In the back, where travelers used to board buses, police now push detainees into wire pens where they sleep on the concrete in the open air.
In interviews both inside and outside of Camp Amtrak, people who had been through the process told harrowing accounts of police brutality and harsh conditions. Some of them, like Davis, had visible injuries. Many said police had attacked them or others in their cells with pepper spray. All recounted trying to sleep on the concrete floor of the bus parking lot with just one blanket – or in some cases no blanket – to protect them from the cold and the mosquitoes which swoop in on randomly alternating nights here. None was given a phone call or access to an attorney.
"They treat us like shit," ....
snip
Jack, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had arrested him on his own property and charged him with violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. "I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence."
[snip]
"They’re steamrolling the whole process without giving you any legal representation."

Freelander, Resovsky and Jack all said that in the mornings after their arrest, they were taken to a courtroom upstairs where most prisoners were pressured into pleading guilty and accepting between 40 and 80 hours of unpaid labor....In the end, given the choice between unpaid work and continued incarceration, nearly all chose to plead guilty.

According to documents obtained by The NewStandard, most who pass through Camp Amtrak are brought in on charges of possession of stolen property, looting or violating curfew. But the vast majority of those interviewed or observed in court this week were arrested for alleged curfew violations or public intoxication.

snip

He continued: "The police are basically arresting people for curfew violations and public intoxication and just using it as a way to get free labor to clean up the prisons and court houses and the police stations. They’re just using it as a way to get people to do their dirty work for free."

snip

All of the interviews quoted and conditions described by the journalist are fully documented on audio and/or videotape. Documents used were provided by Camp Amtrak officials.

The NewStandard will be running stories from correspondent Jessica Azulay in New Orleans for at least the next two weeks, as well as weblog entries provding more background about gathering this story and eyewitness testimony from sources.

Just as I was getting popular

2005-10-12T18:31:00.000-04:00

i stop posting...perhaps I can step it up a bit again, and not lose my 'audience'

Wonderful article on the sinking SS BushCo

2005-09-27T17:01:00.000-04:00

Previously, I had assumed that our long national nightmare would be over in one of three ways, either with Bush somehow managing to finish his term, with him being impeached, convicted and run out of Washington, or with him being impeached, convicted and then refusing to leave, precipitating a constitutional crisis and even, possibly, a civil war. Now I see a fourth very real possibility. . . What if all of a sudden, it sucks being president? Why bother, then? It is clear now that one way the Bush administration might end would be with the president's resignation, in order for him to duck into more tranquil quarters. Who knows, maybe he could spend his days getting tanked in Crawford, not writing another book, or going into exile, perhaps in the south of France.

Ricky is distancing himself from Bush

2005-09-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who has established his credentials as a conservative Republican from a moderate state, is beginning to wear on the White House's patience, according to a report Tuesday in Roll Call, RAW STORY can reveal.

I guess this is part of his election strategy.

Secularism leads to a healthy society

2005-09-27T10:30:00.000-04:00

A great article dispelling the meme that belief in God is necessary for a healthy society,

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

but my favorite is this line:

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

It's so sad, but we really are a developing democracy...

Intelligent Design in PA

2005-09-27T10:23:00.000-04:00

The board president, Sheila Harkins, said in an interview during a break, "The whole thought behind it was to encourage critical thinking."

Yes, we encourage critical thinking by explaining away phenemenom as the result of some master planner ~ look no further for explanation, God did it.

Cronyism and Nepotism

2005-09-27T09:20:00.000-04:00

Billions of dollars of reconstruction contracts awarded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are being investigated amid concerns of cronyism and abuse. More than 80% of the $1.5bn (£850m) in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) were awarded without bidding or with only limited competition, including enormous deals with Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - the former employer of vice-president Dick Cheney - and the Shaw Group. The lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, George Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of Fema, has represented both companies.

More of the same from King George II ~ can anybody not have any doubt that he feels himself to really be the dictator of this country?? I mean everywhere you look in his regime are friends, friends of friends, family, donators . . .

Undeclared?

2005-09-27T09:13:00.000-04:00

CBS News: there is an undeclared civil war already underway in Iraq, between the Sunni minority who ruled this country under Saddam and the Shiite majority.

Undeclared?!? Are you serious? Did you miss Zarqawi declaring war on all Shiites a week or two ago? It's already a declared civil war. We started it.

Rita = Cat. 5

2005-09-21T15:41:00.000-04:00

I think i may have flip-flopped...
With the gulf as warm as it is now, perhaps many more hurricanes are going to reach this strength (is there a higher category?) and as the globe gets warmer, it really may be a lot better to abandon parts of the coast so that we aren't rebuilding these places year after year. Give it up, people...Mother Nature has our number, she'll win everytime, and we can't (nor should we) try to change it.
That is, of course, if this isn't a part of the "weather weapon" thing and they're using Rita to counteract Katrina's disasterious ending. Now he can look like the big hero...it is pretty convenient, but . . .

Levees: faulty design??

2005-09-21T11:47:00.000-04:00

"I don't know if it's bad construction or bad design, but whoever the contractor is has a problem," said Livingston, now a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

More on the Premier's Staged Event

2005-09-16T15:28:00.000-04:00

from page 4:

From Bush's lonely walk to the podium, to the cathedral over his shoulder lit up like Disneyland, to his wooden delivery before an audience of none, there was something particularly off key about all the White House stagecraft imported into the ghostly center of a still half-drowned town. And it was, indeed, literally imported. The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, acting as pool reporter, informed colleagues yesterday that all the lights and generators needed to create the desired effect were flown in by the White House. Reporters were not allowed out of their vans while the president spoke, but they demanded a quick tour of the area beforehand. "Bobby DeServi and Scott Sforza were on hand as we drove up about 8 p.m. or so EDT handling last-minute details of the stagecraft," Bumiller wrote. DeServi is the White House's chief lighting designer; Sforza is in charge of visuals. "Bush will be lit with warm tungsten lighting, but the statue [of Andrew Jackson] and cathedral will be illuminated with much brighter, brighter lights . . . like the candlepower that DeServi and Sforza used on Sept. 11, 2002, to light up the Statue of Liberty for Bush's speech in New York Harbor," she wrote. "Here's a quote from DeServi on the lit up cathedral: 'Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud.' "

Huh...

2005-09-16T14:41:00.000-04:00

Al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation, an Iraqi Shia cleric said in an interview published here on Friday. Kalesi claimed that Zarqawi was killed in the Kurdish northern region of Iraq at the beginning of the US-led war on the country as he was meeting with members of the Ansar Al-Islam group affiliated to Al Qaeda. “His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death. Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is therefore a ploy used by the Americans, an excuse to continue the occupation. It’s a pretext so they don’t leave Iraq.”

Record Deficit to pay for NOLA

2005-09-16T14:36:00.000-04:00

"The last thing in the world we even need to be thinking about is raising taxes. A strong economy is what is going to pay for rebuilding the affected areas," Hubbard said.

Of course, of course...the last thing we'd want to do before outlaying huge sums of money is actually starting taking IN huge sums of money

More theatrics for der President

2005-09-16T13:14:00.000-04:00

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing when the power came back on for blocks on end...The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions. It is impossible to over-emphasize the extent to which this area is under government occupation, and portions of it under government-enforced lockdown. Police cars rule the streets. They...are generally not stopped at checkpoints and roadblocks. All other vehicles are subject to long lines and snap judgments and must PROVE they have vital business inside the vast roped-off regions here. If we did not have the services of an off-duty law enforcement officer, we could not do our jobs in the course of a work day and get back in time to put together the broadcast and get on the air. As we are about to do.

Just like the Green Zone, eh?

What is it about the Bushes and recession?

2005-09-16T13:10:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah...they're sucky presidents with horrible policies

David Sirota on Taxes

2005-09-16T11:35:00.000-04:00

Too late for global warming??

2005-09-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

Intriguing

2005-09-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

There's more than meets the eye here ~ when did the official destroy documents? Why does the 9/11 commission have (or claim to have) no knowledge of Able Danger or that it didn't exist??

Some Pigs angry at excessive spending

2005-09-16T10:01:00.000-04:00

Nobody complains about the billions for Iraq...hypo-fucking-crits!

Vive Chavez!

2005-09-16T09:56:00.000-04:00

The leftist leader told a U.N. summit on Thursday that fighting the war without U.N. authorization showed Washington did not respect the world body. He recommended moving U.N. headquarters to a country that has more regard for the organization. "That's why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country, which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly," Chavez said. World leaders at the summit had been asked to speak for five minutes but Chavez ran long and when the presiding diplomat passed him a note saying his time was up, he threw it on the floor. He said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, so could he. When he finally stopped, he got what observers said was the loudest applause of the summit.

The Iraqi Ho Chi Minh

2005-09-15T13:30:00.000-04:00

[Zarqawi]has united insurgent groups in Baghdad to target the Iraqi Shia Muslim community with the aim of bringing civil war to Iraq, The Times has learnt.
[He]now commands thousands of fighters from various rival groups and is set to order further waves of bombings. Last night the threat was being taken seriously by US and Iraqi officials...“We have got reason to believe that al-Zarqawi has now been given tactical command in the city over groups that have had to merge under him for the sake of survival,” an American intelligence officer in Baghdad told The Times yesterday.
Last throes?? Must be.

The Inquisition, what a show! The Inquisition, here we go!

2005-09-15T12:07:00.000-04:00

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

Fox, you watch this henhouse, ok?

2005-09-15T12:04:00.000-04:00

So, both the House and the Senate rejected indenpendent commission, despite 70% public support (but they don't govern based on polls), AND only the GOP will be able to subpoena witnesses.

Jeb: I would've done better

2005-09-15T11:55:00.000-04:00

Perhaps he's gearing up for '08...

Bush also rejected federalization of disaster response, saying it "enables bad behavior," but said that Congress should force state and local officials to have adequate emergency plans.

No, idiot, the federal gov't is set up by the people to PROTECT them. It's not the bugbear that you make it out to be. It is OURS, and needs to work for the people b/c it by the people and of the people.
And just what sort of 'bad behavior' does in enable, asshole?!?

Is it a Civil War yet?

2005-09-14T17:30:00.000-04:00

Al-Qaida's leader in Iraq purportedly declared all out war on Shiite Muslims, Iraqi troops and the country's government in audio tape released on Internet on Wednesday. . . . The speaker announced "all out war against Shiites everywhere. Beware, there will be no mercy."

We're at Peak Efficiency!?!?

2005-09-14T12:37:00.000-04:00

No really, we are. Tom Delay thinks so, so it must be true. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an "ongoing victory," and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget. They’ve cut it so well, we’re running a record deficit! Huzzah!

152 dead in Baghdad

2005-09-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

More than a dozen explosions ripped through the Iraqi capital in rapid succession Wednesday, killing at least 152 people and wounding 542 in a series of attacks that began with a suicide car bombing that targeted laborers assembled to find work for the day. Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility. The one-day death toll was believed to be the worst in the capital since major combat ended in May 2003, and Al-Jazeera said Al-Qaida in Iraq linked the attacks to the recent killing of about 200 militants from the city of Tal Afar by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Aha...so that's what they're thinking

2005-09-13T17:29:00.000-04:00

Undocumented aliens rebuilding Biloxi, say they deserve visas

So, not only can Bush get rid of min. wage to boost profits for his buds at the contractors, he can also try to push through his "immigration" reform and restart his bid for temp. working visas...

very clever, Georgie, very clever.

RawStory: Congressional Report: "States not at fault"

2005-09-13T15:09:00.000-04:00

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report Tuesday afternoon asserting that Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government, RAW STORY has learned. "This report closes the book on the Bush Administration's attempts to evade accountability," Conyers said in a statement. "The Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time."

The report found that:

All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, "[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available," and the President made such a declaration on August 28.
The Governor did indeed make [..] a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that "Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005...that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]" and "Governor Blanco's August 27,2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination...that 'the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster."
The full report will be available soon on the House Democrats' Judiciary website.

The government of the United States is failing the American people.

2005-09-13T13:30:00.000-04:00

A speech by Sen Byrd

Rove scores big on this one

2005-09-13T12:17:00.000-04:00

President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said..."To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said. The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.
"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.

So, let me get this straight, the Premier who PROMISED he would make us safer doesn't know if we're prepared to deal with another disaster/attack?!?!

Documented FEMA bungling

2005-09-13T11:33:00.000-04:00

Separately, internal documents and emails from FEMA and other government agencies dating back to Aug. 31 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the extent to which the federal government bungled its response to the hurricane. The documents highlight serious deficiencies in the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, a post-Sept. 11 playbook on how to deal with catastrophic events. Mr. Chertoff activated the National Response Plan last Tuesday by declaring the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina an "Incident of National Significance." In one instance, federal environmental health specialists, who were charged with protecting both rescue workers and evacuees, weren't called in by the Department of Homeland Security until Sunday -- 12 days after the Occupational Safety & Health Administration announced it had teams from various agencies standing by ready to assist. Even now, with mounting evidence of environmental problems, the deployment is being held up by continuing interagency wrangling, according to officials at the National Institutes of Health, which also is involved in the effort.
In addition, FEMA's official requests, known as tasking assignments and used by the agency to demand help from other government agencies, show that it first asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18 hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do ambulances."
snip
The part of the plan that authorizes OSHA's role as coordinator and allows it to mobilize experts from other agencies such as NIH wasn't activated by FEMA until shortly before 5 p.m. Sunday. The delay came despite repeated efforts by the agencies to mobilize. Attempts by officials at NIH to reach FEMA officials and send them briefing materials by email failed as the agency's server failed. "I noticed that every email to a FEMA person bounced back this week. They need a better internet provider during disasters!!" one frustrated Department of Health official wrote to colleagues last Thursday.

This is bad enough...

2005-09-13T11:27:00.000-04:00

By 9:40, he already had dodged the particulars of Roe v. Wade four times.
1-"I feel the need to stay away from a discussion of specific cases," he said.
2-"I think I should stay away from discussion of specific issues," he demurred.
3-"I do feel compelled to point that I should not ... agree or disagree with particular decisions," he persisted.
4-"That's something that I'm going to have to draw the line in the sand," he offered.

But that's not all...

The 18 senators of the Judiciary Committee were allotted 30 minutes each to question the nominee for chief justice of the United States.

9 hours of questiong for 30 plus years of service...are you kidding me?!?!?

I almost agree with him

2005-09-13T11:25:00.000-04:00

"What we've seen in Louisiana - the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster - is exactly the kind of situation where the second amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves," NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said in a statement. "When law enforcement isn't available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others - the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre added. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned." A Louisiana state statute allows the chief law enforcement officer to "regulate possession" of firearms during declared emergencies, the NRA notes.

Except that they're not REPEALING it, asshole . . . but still . . .

US falling behind in Education

2005-09-13T10:18:00.000-04:00

The United States is losing ground in education, as peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in student achievement and school graduations, a study shows. Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree. By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago...

And, let's be clear, the answer to this isn't mandatory testing to make sure our students are being taught and retaining vast amounts of facts...that's not the point of education. In order to make their way in the 'new world order' kids are going to need to process information, analyze it and come up w/creative and innovative solutions. It's not about memorizing rote facts; it's about being able to adapt to constantly changing situations and respond in a unique way. Our education system DOES NOT do this at all, except for the rich, upper class schools that can afford 'advanced' classes.

Freedom at the Freedom Walk

2005-09-13T09:53:00.000-04:00

One protester, Rik Silverman, 27, of Arlington said he was holding a sign that said, "Shame on You" when a marcher leaned over the railing and punched him in the stomach. A U.S. Park Police officer wrote a report but no arrests were made.

How soon until Party stalwarts and goons, complete with white shirts, are ready to quiet ANY sign of dissent?!?
Shameful. In America, this makes me want to vomit.

Talabani: US can withdraw 50,000 by years end

2005-09-13T09:44:00.000-04:00

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview yesterday that the United States could withdraw as many as 50,000 troops by the end of the year, declaring there are enough Iraqi forces trained and ready to begin assuming control in cities throughout the country.

He and Bush are having a press conference today; we'll see if he changes his tune after that

Dogtags for Freedom Walk participants

2005-09-10T15:58:00.000-04:00

from me, through Kos, Atrios and the Liberal Avenger, to you:

The Liberal Avenger: Toy dog-tags from Stars and Stripes is a bit of a different story, though, I think. (This is where I get overly liberal). We have a national myth about the infallability of the American dogface GI and the righteousness and glory that is allegedly inherent in every war. Part of perpetuating that is fetishizing(?) war "things" for children and young men. Presenting a child with a set of toy dog tags sends a subtle positive message about the military, soldiering and the war.

It's about glorifying the war, and the military; increasing nationalism and blind patriotism. It's propaganda.

Bush's radio address: Katrina & 9/11

2005-09-10T15:54:00.000-04:00

"Our greatest resource in such times is the compassionate character of the American people, because even the most destructive storm cannot weaken the heart and soul of our nation," the president said in his weekly radio address. "America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it."

uhm...and where was your compassion on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday?
Where's the compassion when you're cutting minimum wage for people trying to rebuild their homes?? You're gonna f- up the NOLA reconstruction, just like you f-ed up the Iraqi reconstruction, the war, and the American people (not counting your 'base: the have's and the have-more's).
Dick.

UN Summit future in doubt...thanks Bolton, you ass!

2005-09-10T15:51:00.000-04:00

The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos

2005-09-10T15:50:00.000-04:00

The Taliban are buying more sophisticated arms, and Russian and Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles in particular are flowing into Afghanistan in increasing numbers, according to people familiar with the resistance who spoke to Asia Times Online. Obviously this gives an added dimension to the Taliban's fighting capabilities,

Just one more reason we should've finished this war before choosing another one.

Iraq seals Syrian border

2005-09-10T15:48:00.000-04:00

Pot calls kettles black!

2005-09-10T15:46:00.000-04:00

British and European diplomats walked out of a human rights conference in Malaysia yesterday, after the country's former prime minister claimed that the United States and the UK were "terrorist" states and that air force pilots whose bombs killed Iraqi civilians were murderers.

Well, this source may be dodgy, but there's still truth there. A fool may say the sun is up, but that doesn't mean its not true.

Newsweek: Bush @ 38%

2005-09-10T15:41:00.000-04:00

By way of Rawstory:
57% OF AMERICANS HAVE LOST CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT TO DEAL WITH ANOTHER NATURAL DISASTER;
52% DO NOT TRUST PRESIDENT TO MAKE RIGHT DECISIONS IN A CRISIS
38%: BUSH'S JOB APPROVAL AT RECORD LOW: 38 PERCENT
66% DISSATISFIED WITH DIRECTION OF COUNTRY
65% OF MINORITIES BELIEVE RACE WAS THE REASON FOR SLOW RESPONSE; 47 PERCENT SAY 'MAJOR REASON;'
64 PERCENT OF WHITES SAY IT WAS NOT A REASON AT ALL
Notice that its not just 'blacks' who think race was an issue ~ ALL MINORITIES ~
Wake up, White People! It really may be true.

NOLA count lower than thought

2005-09-10T14:30:00.000-04:00

Sorry, Joe, you blew it the first time

2005-09-10T14:27:00.000-04:00

"I wish there had been a hearing," Lieberman said Friday, and recalled how he wanted more scrutiny of the new FEMA head before he took office.

Just like George, he wants a do-over...

TPM: Recruiters buying their time

2005-09-09T17:09:00.000-04:00

WSJ (paid) has this quote:
Ten U.S. Army recruiters are offering volunteer help for Katrina evacuees at Houston's Astrodome. But the recruiters, struggling to keep enlistment up during Iraq war, are also available with options for the jobless. "Our intent is to approach the evacuees at the right time for them,'' says Army spokesman Douglas Smith."

Great Graphic on Bush's Numbers

2005-09-09T17:06:00.000-04:00

Note the bump at 9/11, the smaller bump in 3/03 w/the Iraq War, a smaller one with Saddam's capture . . .

Fishing Trip

2005-09-09T16:34:00.000-04:00

More GOP compassion

2005-09-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots. The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

GOP to cut Medicaid

2005-09-09T15:17:00.000-04:00

Republicans are going ahead with long-standing plans to trim Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits, even though party moderates are balking at cutting programs that aid the poor while hundreds of thousands are homeless from Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina March on Washington on 9/11

2005-09-09T15:07:00.000-04:00

With the 9/11 event happening, too, they better watch out they don't get arrested!

Activists are organizing plans for Katrina survivors to march in Washington D.C. on and plan to stage an act of civil disobedience by building an encampment on the Washington D.C. mall on Sept. 11, RAW STORY has learned. The encampment would serve as a center for Katrina activism.

It's their HOME!

2005-09-09T14:50:00.000-04:00

Community Labor United, a coalition of low-income groups in New Orleans. It went on to demand that a committee made up of evacuees "oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people.... We are calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans." It's a radical concept: The $10.5 billion released by Congress and the $500 million raised by private charities doesn't actually belong to the relief agencies or the government; it belongs to the victims. The agencies entrusted with the money should be accountable to them....
When I was in Sri Lanka six months after the tsunami, many survivors told me that the reconstruction was victimizing them all over again. A council of the country's most prominent businesspeople had been put in charge of the process, and they were handing the coast over to tourist developers at a frantic pace. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor fishing people were still stuck in sweltering inland camps, patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and entirely dependent on relief agencies for food and water. They called reconstruction "the second tsunami." ....These ideas are not without precedent. When Mexico City was struck by a devastating earthquake in 1985, the state also failed the people: poorly constructed public housing crumbled and the army was ready to bulldoze buildings with survivors still trapped inside. A month after the quake 40,000 angry refugees marched on the government, refusing to be relocated out of their neighborhoods and demanding a "Democratic Reconstruction." Not only were 50,000 new dwellings for the homeless built in a year; the neighborhood groups that grew out of the rubble launched a movement that is challenging Mexico's traditional power holders to this day....Because there is only one thing that can compensate the victims of this most human of natural disasters, and that is what has been denied them throughout: power. It will be a long and difficult battle, but New Orleans' evacuees should draw strength from the knowledge that they are no longer poor people; they are rich people who have been temporarily locked out of their bank accounts.

Presidents and countrymen

2005-09-09T14:41:00.000-04:00

So I've been led to have certain expectations of our President. He's in place to protect the United States and its people. After all, he has said many times he will do all in his power to fulfill that role. And, indeed, this is a responsibility of any U.S. President...
If I am a U.S. Citizen trapped in the Superdome in New Orleans, U.S.A. with twenty-five thousand other Americans, if I am desecrated, with no water, with no formula for my baby, with no food for my children, do I expect that the mayor of the city will save me?
Do I think that the governor and the resources she commands can deal with the immensity of this catastrophe?
Do I think maybe the news correspondents gathered outside the Dome will whisk me away to safety?
Nope. I figure I can count on my President, our President, to rally every available resource to come to the aid of his countrymen.
snip
What I also know and will never forget is this: men and women were dying over in Iraq to protect (supposedly) their country while members of their families were dying--unnecessarily-- at the Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana in The United States of America.

Iraq/Katrina parallels

2005-09-09T14:30:00.000-04:00

In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure. The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development. The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a "turkey farm," a source of patronage jobs. As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's "upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management." By now everyone knows FEMA's current head went from overseeing horse shows to overseeing the nation's response to disaster, with no obvious qualifications other than the fact that he was Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate.
All that's missing from the Katrina story is an expensive reconstruction effort, with lucrative deals for politically connected companies, that fails to deliver essential services.

And they've done that now too

The Decadence of Rome

2005-09-09T14:23:00.000-04:00

The United States is the only superpower left, we can do anything we want, we don't have to care about what other countries think or worry about levees and pumps, new runways, more refineries, global warming, near misses at airports, better education, or competition from China and Asia. God Bless America!

Collective accountability

2005-09-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

We are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers ~ that why we are united as a country.

How is it the so-called Christian Right has no concept of this?!?

In this sense, the tragic events along the Gulf Coast have revealed not only the administration's deficiencies, but also the critical miscalculations and deceptions of the Republican Revolution of the past 25 years. The central strategy of that revolution has been to starve government through tax cuts, thus enabling elected officials to say that government programs must be reduced or eliminated. What this meant for maintaining the levees on which New Orleans depended has now been amply documented. The Republican argument that government was too big and ineffective was of course accurate in some areas. But as a sweeping generalization it is critically off the mark. The new global era requires a refocusing of government priorities, not its reduction to ineffectiveness.

This is what happens when your government, your society operates on an 'every man for themselves" attitude...it's what happens when you let people fail.

Katrina and Philosophy

2005-09-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

The horrors of America's downward spiral are lessons for a global Enlightenment, and if we are unwilling to heed past experiences, we will invite even more catastrophic news. Seen in a Kantian light-its triple beam of humanism, autonomy, and sustainability-the events of the past five years have been a perfectly rational recipe for disaster....n 2005, the wind sown by the neocons was reaped in the hurricane at the Gulf coast.... Other victims in America were good old ideas: humanism, in policy; autonomy, in the media; and sustainable development, in energy goals. East Asia and Europe may aspire to the rational humanity explored by Confucius and Kant, but America lives today on the darker, angrier, and willful planet of Thomas Hobbes and Ayn Rand....Should America's new rulers succeed in controlling the academy, U.S. philosophers would join the fate of their counterparts in other failed nation-states, such as East Germany...Philosophy faces a crisis. Philosophers need to return to this early modern task, to work on the systematic frames of meaning. The path of discovery runs between the extremes of dumb dogmatism and shallow skepticism.There are multiple ways of returning to this assignment, and give-and-take pluralism is indeed the point. But two items merit anyone's consideration, especially in schools at the Gulf. First, Philosophy can rise to the occasion if it is humble enough to look outside, to the data of other disciplines, and to integrate this empirical rainbow into rational frames. Second, we can frame the data by focusing on the deeper meaning of climate change that escapes America's politicians. To avoid more Katrinas and Darwin Awards in this willfully ignorant society, philosophers must once again teach, just like shamans and metaphysicians had done earlier, to think like clouds-to map out viable stances in nature's dance. It's time to do work. There will be bad weather, and the clock's ticking. History will tell if neocons - too greedy, selfish, and mean - can wise up.

Kos: Two new polls

2005-09-09T13:49:00.000-04:00

CBS News Poll. Sept. 6-7, 2005. N=725 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4

From what you have seen or heard about the situation in Iraq, what should the United States do now? Should the U.S. increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, keep the same number of U.S. troops in Iraq as there are now, or decrease the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, or remove all its troops from Iraq?

Increase 11% (D:10; I:12; R:12)
Same 38% (D:9; I:25; R:38)
Decrease 25% (D:25; I:24; R:33)
Remove All 33% (D:50; I:33; R:14)

42 percent of Republicans want us to start pulling troops out. Message to the idiots at the DLC and the rest of the timid DC Democratic establishment -- there's nothing radical or extreme about the growing anti-war sentiment in this nation. The position in favor of withdrawal is now supported by a 3-2 margin. Those advocating staying the course are now the extreme on the issue, marginalized to the fringes.

AP/Ipsos (PDF). 9/6-8. MoE 3% (8/1-3 results)

Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as President?

Strongly Approve 20 (23)
Somewhat Approve 11 (10)
Lean Toward Approval 8 (9)
Lean Toward Disapproval 14 (13)
Somewhat Disapprove 5 (5)
Strongly Disapprove 40 (38)

Total

Approve 39 (42)
Disapprove 59 (55)

A good first step

2005-09-09T13:37:00.000-04:00

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Associated Press has learned. Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, where he was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster, according to two federal officials who declined to be identified before the announcement. Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad w. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief and rescue efforts.

2005-09-09T12:59:00.000-04:00

As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year. These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans. After watching many of their predictions prove grimly accurate, "Hurricane Pam" planners now hope they were wrong about one detail — the death toll. The 61,290 estimate is six times what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has warned people to expect. "I pray to God we don't see those numbers," Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "My gut is ... we don't. But we just don't know."

Note: he has to use his gut, b/c he has no other emergency experience!
Also predicted:

~Flood waters would surge over levees, creating "a catastrophic mass casualty/mass evacuation" and leaving drainage pumps crippled for up to six months. "It will take over one year to re-enter areas most heavily impacted," the report estimated.
~More than 600,000 houses and 6,000 businesses would be affected, more than two-thirds of them destroyed. Nearly a quarter-million children would be out of school. "All 40 medical facilities in the impacted area (are) isolated and useless," it says.
~Local officials would be quickly overwhelmed with the five-digit death toll, 187,862 people injured and 196,395 falling ill. A half million people would be homeless.
"Federal support must be provided in a timely manner to save lives, prevent human suffering and mitigate severe damage," the report says. "This may require mobilizing and deploying assets before they are requested via normal (National Response Plan) protocols."

Which is exactly what the national response plan called for!

Suburban NOLA cops prevented escape!

2005-09-09T12:48:00.000-04:00

As the situation grew steadily worse in New Orleans last week, you might have wondered why people didn't just leave on foot. The Louisiana Superdome is less than two miles from a bridge that leads over the Mississippi River out of the city.
The answer: Any crowd that tried to do so was met by suburban police, some of whom fired guns to disperse the group and seized their water. Running out of food and water, they walked to the bridge, growing in number to around 800 people as word spread of a safe way out: As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. In an interview with UPI, Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson confirmed that his department shut down the bridge to pedestrians: "If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged." The increasingly desperate group set up camp on the New Orleans side of the bridge, where they were seen by several media outlets, until they were chased off at gunpoint by Gretna police...

Some Quotes

2005-09-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If not now -- when?-Talmudic saying, Mishnah, Abot

Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have we created thee, so that thou mightest be free according to thy own will and honor, to be thy own creator and builder. To thee alone we gave growth and development on thy own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life.-Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de Hominis Dignitate

Nothing then is unchageable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.-Thomas Jefferson

Chirac to miss summit

2005-09-09T11:38:00.000-04:00

Perhaps the illness will provide a way for him to gracefully step down and save face at the same time.

Constitutional Convention

2005-09-09T11:28:00.000-04:00

Could we even have one now?? Is anybody even aware of the issues and philosophies underlying their beliefs regarding government?

Gross.

2005-09-09T11:27:00.000-04:00

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, issued an appeal Thursday urging people to sign an online petition to fire the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency over his handling of the Katrina response. After an inquiry from the Associated Press, the DSCC quickly pulled down the page and said they would donate to charity any money raised by the anti-FEMA petition. When recipients clicked on a link to the petition, the top center of the screen _ above the call to "Fire the FEMA director" _ had asked for a donation to the DSCC. Other DSCC Web pages have the same appeal for contributions, but several do not.

Iraqi re-construction halted

2005-09-09T11:19:00.000-04:00

The United States will halt construction work on some water and power plants in Iraq because it is running out of money for projects, officials said yesterday. Security costs have cut into the funds available to complete some major infrastructure projects that were started under the $18.4 billion U.S. plan to rebuild Iraq...While no overall figures are yet available, one contractor has stopped work on six of eight water-treatment plants it was assigned. "We have scaled back our projects in many areas," James Jeffrey, a senior adviser on Iraq for the State Department, told lawmakers at a hearing of the House Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee. "We do not have the money."
More than two years after Congress approved funding for the rebuilding effort, electricity and oil production remain at or below pre-war levels; and unemployment remains high. The slow pace of progress appeared to exasperate both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who compared the situation with the Bush administration's handling of damage from Hurricane Katrina. Both situations reflected a lack of planning, poor execution and a failure by senior White House officials to follow through on commitments, Democrats said. "It seems sort of almost incomprehensible to me that we haven't been able to do better on" restoring power to Iraq, said Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Penn., who recently visited areas damaged by Katrina. "Coming back up through Mississippi and Louisiana after being down on some relief effort, you know, when power shuts down, everything shuts down." Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who has previously criticized the Iraq rebuilding effort, said the Bush administration's vision for using reconstruction funds to stabilize Iraq "was largely a chimera, a castle built of sand. Reconstruction in Iraq has been slower, more painful, more complex, more fragmented and more inefficient than anyone in Washington or Baghdad could have imagined a couple of years ago," said Kolbe, chairman of the subcommittee.

Maybe with competitive bidding, you'd've gotten a lower quote, idiots!

FreedomWalk: Staged, Controlled Propaganda

2005-09-09T11:07:00.000-04:00

What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest...One restricted group will be the media, whose members will not be allowed to walk along the march route. Reporters and cameras are restricted to three enclosed areas along the route but are not permitted to walk alongside participants walking from the Pentagon, across the Memorial Bridge to the Mall.

Controlling media access, making sure all who are walking and cheering are ardent supporters ~ it'll make for good imagery for the Premier.

Yes, people...

2005-09-09T10:53:00.000-04:00

The reason the emperor is cold is because he's wearing no clothes.

The reason the keep screwing everything up is because they're incompetent and focused solely on their right-wing, New American Century agenda. Neo-con fascists.

Muslims say 9/11 a hoax

2005-09-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

Of course, this also serves another purpose. Now, anyone who even remotely goes near this idea can be easily tarred and feathered.
"You're emboldening the Terrorists...see their newspaper! You're quoted in it!!"

Rick really is crazy

2005-09-09T10:41:00.000-04:00

U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is suggesting that early mistakes in predicting the path of Hurricane Katrina may be a symptom of lost focus at the National Weather Service. Santorum, who introduced legislation earlier this year to curb the output of government weather forecasters, says tracking life-threatening weather must be central to what the agency is doing.
Asked about Katrina by WITF, Santorum described weather service warnings for Florida, where the storm first made landfall, as “not sufficient." Santorum’s bill instructs the government to abandon weather prediction and data reporting efforts that duplicate private-sector activity. He came under fire when it was revealed that the head of State College-based AccuWeather, which would benefit, has given his campaigns thousands of dollars.

Does he even have any handlers who at least check into this before he craps this out of his mouth?

More of Powell on 20/20

2005-09-09T10:34:00.000-04:00

He feels terrible...

He told Walters that he feels "terrible" about the claims he made in that now-infamous address -- assertions that later proved to be false. When asked if he feels it has tarnished his reputation, he said, "Of course it will. It's a blot. I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now." He doesn't blame former CIA Director George Tenet for the misleading information ... some lower-level personnel in the intelligence community failed him and the country. "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me," he said.

that the lower-level grunts f-ed up (sounds familiar...)

When Walters pressed Powell about that support, given the "mess" that the invasion has yielded, Powell said, "Who knew what the whole mess was going to be like?" But it is now a difficult situation, but difficult situations are there to be worked on and solved, not walked away from, not cutting and running from."

The popular BushCo refain: Who knew, who knew...who could've knowwnnnnnnn!

NYPost: Time to take photos

2005-09-09T10:31:00.000-04:00

A request by FEMA that news organizations not photograph dead bodies being recovered in New Orleans is not going to fly with the major newsweeklies.
"I understand the request, but to not take pictures of dead bodies is not something we can heed," said Jim Kelly, the managing editor of Time.

Powell is right

2005-09-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

"I don't think its racism, I think its economic," Powell said.
"When you look at those who werent able to get out, it should have been a blinding flash of the obvious to everybody that when you order a mandatory evacuation, you cant expect everybody to evacuate on their own.
"These are people who dont have credit cards; only one in ten families at that economic level in New Orleans have a car. So it wasn't a racial thing --- but poverty disproportionately affects African-Americans in this country. And it happened because they were poor," he said.

I won me a Brownie

2005-09-09T09:52:00.000-04:00

one can only hope they dip him in gold to give as an award to other in competenet, lying cronies...vive Bushco!

according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, [he] was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University).
Under the heading of "Professional Associations and Memberships" on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn't find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA's Andrews, Brown said "he's never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home." However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown "was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here."
Brown's FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown's work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown's boss for two-and-a-half years in the early '80s. "He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,"

Wow, actual honesty

2005-09-09T09:50:00.000-04:00

Laura Bush described as "disgusting" comments by rapper Kanye West and Democratic chairman Howard Dean blaming her husband for the disproportionate number of black hurricane victims.
"I think all of those remarks are disgusting, to be perfectly frank, because of course President Bush cares about everyone in our country," the first lady said Thursday in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks.
"And I know that. I mean, I'm the person who lives with him," she said. "I know what he's like and I know what he thinks and I know how he cares about people."

no, not that...

Mrs. Bush said it was clear that poor people were more vulnerable when the hurricane hit. "They lived in poorer neighborhoods. Their neighborhoods were the ones that were more likely to flood, as we saw in New Orleans. Their housing was more vulnerable," she said. "And that's what we saw, and that's what we want to address in our country."

You're right, we do. So, let's suspend minimum wage! Hoorah!!

Jesus Christ!

2005-09-09T09:05:00.000-04:00

Holy Fucking Shit!

President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.
In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused "a national emergency" that permits him to take such action under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in ravaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

I can't even believe this is America anymore!

Yahoo: Protest at White House

2005-09-08T18:25:00.000-04:00

With the US flag flying at half mast over the White House out of respect for the hurricane victims, the protestors chanted "Impeach Bush" and held up blue and yellow banners reading: "Shame" and "Help the Hurricane Victims."

Pelosi is right

2005-09-08T18:22:00.000-04:00

"Americans should now harbor no illusions about the government's ability to respond effectively to disasters," she said. "Our vulnerabilities were laid bare."

Bush has made us even weaker and more vulnerable. His poor response to this can only embolden the enemy.
Good thing were fighting 'them' over there.

MediaMatters: Who's responsible?

2005-09-08T18:17:00.000-04:00

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan clearly states that the federal government may take a "proactive" response to a catastrophe and bypass state requests for aid. Normally, it is a governor's responsibility to request federal aid in the event of an emergency. But under a "proactive" response, "[s]tandard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude." Moreover, Blanco requested federal aid three days before Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reprinted Blanco's August 27 request to Bush to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana and to provide "supplementary Federal assistance." Further, the White House had already authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to assist with the hurricane emergency. According to an August 26 White House statement, FEMA was authorized "to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency."

Scottie's right. Ultimately, the Premier is in charge, and this was HIS responsibility. Yes, Nagin fucked up not using those schoolbuses, but FEMA, at that point, has the right and responsiblity to step in and set things right.
Perhaps with a competent chief they would have.

AmericaBlog: Bush losing GOP support

2005-09-08T18:01:00.000-04:00

The Pew survey shows Bush's support among Republicans is strong but slipping, and since his support among Democrats and self-described independents remains consistent, Bush's declining approval is linked directly to that slippage within his own party.
The new poll shows Bush with a job approval rating of 79 percent among Republicans, down 9 percentage points since Pew's July survey. Among Democrats, his approval was 19 percent compared with 18 percent in July, and among independents it was 33 percent versus 32 percent, changes that in both cases are within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Kos' list of Nay voters on Katrina relief

2005-09-08T17:59:00.000-04:00

He has links to each Congressperson there.
Rep. Joe Barton - TX
Jeff Flake - AZ
Virginia Foxx - NC
Scott Garrett - NJ
John Hostettler - IN
Steve King - IA
Butch Otter - ID
Ron Paul - TX
James Sensenbrenner - WI
Tom Tancredo - CO
Lynn Westmoreland - GA

Pelosi on CNN

2005-09-08T17:36:00.000-04:00

diana04 transcribed here appearance; read the whole thing.
Are we a country that wants to measure our strength in terms of the health and well-being of our people, as well as our military strength? Or is it a country that is measured by the a tax cuts that we give to the wealthiest people in our country, at the expense of the protection of the American people?
That's my America, Congresswoman.

Haitian refugess jailed for years

2005-09-08T17:33:00.000-04:00

Great Nation article

2005-09-08T17:27:00.000-04:00

For those who don't think its race-based:

"Their message to black people here is, Get out or die. You on your own," says Rahim, as the cops pull away.
snip
Archie Haley, an emergency medical technician from Oak Grove, near the Arkansas border, squats as I scarf down a military MRE food ration; he explains that the major problem is "the large population of welfare-ized blacks who can't help themselves." My interlocutor is white like me, so he feels comfortable. "See, these people are the city's disease."

Disgusting! The worst is, this 'dependence' argument is part-and-parcel of republican ideology ~ ya'know, the same ones who are running the rescue effort

About the only thing I agree with Ayn Rand on

2005-09-08T16:59:00.000-04:00

A philosophic system is an integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation -- or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt, like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown.

Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It

Major Assault Coming in N. Iraq

2005-09-08T16:10:00.000-04:00

The United States is considering an all-out military attack in the coming weeks against the town of Tal Afar in northern Iraq, which it sees as a stronghold of rebellion, a U.S. general said on Thursday.
U.S. and Iraqi troops have been battling insurgents in Tal Afar, west of the northern city of Mosul, for several days. A joint U.S.-Iraqi military statement said they killed seven insurgents on Wednesday.

The United States sees Tal Afar, near the Syrian border, as a conduit for foreign fighters and military equipment coming into Iraq to help insurgents fighting the occupying U.S. forces and the Shi'ite Muslim- and Kurdish- dominated Iraqi government.
The insurgents are mainly drawn from Iraq's third main community, Sunni Arabs, who account for some 20 percent of the population and have dominated Iraqi politics for decades, under ousted leader Saddam Hussein and before.
"You will see, over the next several weeks -- we're not specifying any time -- specific military operations to target the insurgency in Tal Afar," Lynch said.

He said U.S. forces had "indications" that insurgents were living in Tal Afar, and intelligence reports suggested some 20 percent of them were "foreign fighters". He did not say where they came from.
Lynch added that U.S. and Iraqi forces had been trying to wipe out the insurgency in a series of operations since May, culminating in the operations of the last few days.

"We have now sufficient assets available between the coalition forces and Iraqi security forces ... to leave behind a robust security presence so the insurgents cannot return."

Number 9....number 9

2005-09-08T16:08:00.000-04:00

One bit of news that hasn't received the public vetting it merits is Iran's declared intent to open an international oil exchange market, or "bourse."
Not only would the new entity compete against the New York Mercantile Exchange and London's International Petroleum Exchange (both owned by American corporations), but it would also ignite international oil trading in euros.
"A shift away from U.S. dollars to euros in the oil market would cause the demand for petrodollars to drop, perhaps causing the value of the dollar to plummet," Brian Miller and Celeste Vogler of Project Censored wrote in Censored 2006.
"Russia, Venezuela and some members of OPEC have expressed interest in moving towards a petroeuro system," he said. And it isn't entirely implausible that China, which is "the world's second largest holder of U.S. currency reserves," might eventually follow suit.
"Barring a U.S. attack, it appears imminent that Iran's euro-dominated oil bourse will open in March 2006," Miller and Vogler continued. "Logically, the most appropriate U.S. strategy is compromise with the EU and OPEC towards a dual-currency system for international oil trades."

This is even more significant since Saddam wanted to start trading in euro's as well with his oil ~ look for war before 03/06

More on #6

2005-09-08T15:59:00.000-04:00

Since I wrote oil being transferred out of Iraq in 03 earlier today:

According to the GAO, Hussein smuggled $6 billion worth of oil out of Iraq--most of it through the Persian Gulf. Yet the U.N. fleet charged with intercepting any such smugglers was under direct command of American officers, and consisted overwhelmingly of U.S. Navy ships. In 2001, for example, 90 of its vessels belonged to the United States, while Britain contributed only four, Joy Gordon wrote in a December article for Harper's magazine.
Scott Ritter, a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq during the first six years of economic sanctions against the country, unearthed yet another scam: The United States allegedly allowed an oil company run by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov's sister to purchase cheap oil from Iraq and resell it to U.S. companies at market value--purportedly earning Hussein "hundreds of millions" more.
"It has been estimated that 80 percent of the oil illegally smuggled out of Iraq under 'oil for food' ended up in the United States," Ritter wrote in the U.K. Independent.

10 Censored stories

2005-09-08T15:46:00.000-04:00

Common Dreams:
1. Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government
One year ago, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., released an 81-page analysis of how the administration has administered the country's major open government laws. His report found that the feds consistently "narrowed the scope and application" of the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act and other key public-information legislation, while expanding laws blocking access to certain records--even creating new categories of "protected" information and exempting entire departments from public scrutiny.
When those methods haven't been enough, the Bush administration has simply refused to release records--even when the requester was a congressional subcommittee or the Government Accountability Office, the study found
2. Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll
Decades from now, the civilized world may well look back on the assaults on Fallujah in April and November 2004 and point to them as examples of the United States' and Britain's utter disregard for the most basic wartime rules of engagement.
Not long after the "coalition" had embarked on its second offensive, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called for an investigation into whether the Americans and their allies had engaged in "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons, and the use of human shields," among other possible "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions ... considered war crimes" under federal law.
Numerous sources reported that coalition forces cut off water and electricity, seized the main hospital, shot at anyone who ventured out into the open, executed families waving white flags while trying to swim across the Euphrates or otherwise flee the city, shot at ambulances, raided homes and killed people who didn't understand English, rolled over injured people with tanks, and allowed corpses to rot in the streets and be eaten by dogs.
Medical staff and others reported seeing people, dead and alive, with melted faces and limbs, injuries consistent with the use of phosphorous bombs.
3. Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage
4. Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In
5. U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
6. The Real Oil-for-Food Scam
7. Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood
8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates
9. Iran's New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency
10. Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy
More details available at the link.

Biloxi residents compaining too

2005-09-08T15:18:00.000-04:00

CSM

At the Lighthouse Apostolic Holiness Church in east Biloxi, Betty Kelley spent Monday and Tuesday cooking stews and chicken in 30-gallon vats for hungry residents. "No one was coming in to help us. We had to do it all on our own," says Ms. Kelley. "All they have been saying is they want a hot meal."
Across the Gulf Coast region, similar scenes are playing out: small churches and private individuals trying to meet whatever needs they perceive wherever they see them...But no private organization can even begin to coordinate the rescue, evacuation, shelter, and care for hundreds of thousands of people, they add.
Among people here, frustration is rising with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in particular. Though complaints aren't always related to FEMA's areas of responsibility, there's a pervasive sense - among some disaster experts as well - that the agency has not performed up to par.
"You'd assume FEMA would have the capacity and structure to respond to these events in an expedient manner. That's the whole purpose of FEMA," says Havidán Rodríguez, director of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, noting Katrina is the first test for FEMA under its reorganization within the Department of Homeland Security. "This was the first opportunity the Department of Homeland Security had to show it was well-equipped and prepared, and obviously that was not the case."
One troubling aspect of the response, say Professor Rodríguez and others, was the apparent lack of communication - a basic requirement for disaster response - in the first days after Katrina. In a noted example, FEMA chief Michael Brown told reporters he had no idea that the thousands of people at the New Orleans Convention Center were desperate, though images of the center had been playing all day on television. Local officials and law enforcement officers complained of being unable to communicate.

Fitzgerald Finishing Up??

2005-09-08T15:09:00.000-04:00

Mike's almost done, but the odd thing is the martyr-like status Yahoo seems to give Miller ~
It seems like this fall the tide's gonna break and this administration is going to begin to be washed out to sea.

NOLA Media Black-out

2005-09-08T15:02:00.000-04:00

Talking Points Memo:

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 were the FEMA orders barring members of the press from photographing anything to do with the recovery of the bodies of the dead...
...But a blanket ban serves only to prevent the public from knowing what really happened last week. And the right of FEMA or any branch of the federal government for that matter to issue such a ban on American soil seems highly dubious to me... But this is happening on American soil. This isn't a war zone. Nor is it any longer a situation where police or National Guard troops are in the midst of retaking control from mobs or looters. This is a recovery from a natural disaster.
Now comes this post from Brian Williams,
[Excerpt: 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.]
..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 in time last week is coming in in force now. And one of the key missions appears to be cutting off public information about what's happening in the city.

Carter beats Bush!!

2005-09-08T14:37:00.000-04:00

Saw this at AmericaBlog:
The results of Zogby asking "who would you vote for, Bush or person x". Interestingly, people still hate Kerry. The lesson there: Don't stand for anything and you won't win.

Bush 44, Clinton 46
Bush II 34, Bush I 41
Bush 20, Reagan 59
Bush 42, Carter 50
Bush 48, Kerry 47

SkyNews Ireland, by way of Kos

2005-09-08T14:30:00.000-04:00

The TV caption says it all.

GOP wants Katrina Czar

2005-09-08T14:28:00.000-04:00

And Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison says she thinks the president likes the idea.

Look for it to be an 08 potential

Iraqi Gov't Militias

2005-09-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

The United Nations raised the alarm on Thursday about mounting violence in Iraq blamed on pro-government militias and urged the authorities to look into reports of systematic torture in police stations.
In a bi-monthly human rights report, released on a day when 14 more victims of "extrajudicial executions" were found near Baghdad, the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq also said "mass arrests" by U.S. and Iraqi forces, and long detentions without charge, could damage support for the new political system.
"Corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions," it said, noting incidents reported after arrests by "forces linked to the Ministry of Interior."

Now, I know Rummy says that "free people are allowed to make mistakes," but to have this taking place in a country that screams to the Mid-East "AMERICAN PUPPET STATE" is not good for ol'brand USA
~ but i'm guessing condemnations of this will be quick on the heels of apology for Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, as in, never

Car bomb attack kills 16 in Basra

2005-09-08T13:46:00.000-04:00

BBC News:
At least 16 people have been killed and 20 injured in a car bomb attack in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The explosion took place on Wednesday evening outside a restaurant near the city centre which was packed with members of the Iraqi security forces.
It was the worst car bombing in Basra since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The attack follows the killing of four US security guards and two British soldiers in separate incidents near Basra earlier this week.
A BBC correspondent in Baghdad, Jon Brain, says the increase in violence in southern Iraq, which is under British control, suggests the insurgents are beginning to gain a foothold in the area, which has been relatively peaceful.
In other violence, Iraqi police say they have found 13 bodies south of the capital, Baghdad. Eleven were found near the town of Rustamiya, and another two in Iskandariya.
All the victims had been shot.
The bodies were found in an area many Iraqis call the Triangle of Death - an area where the mainly Sunni-dominated central Iraq meets the Shia-dominated provinces to the south.
Sunni and Shia leaders have each accused the other's communities of involvement in killings in the area.

When the rebels are able to attack at will throughout the country, how are we winning?? How are they in the last throes???

Governator Sucks

2005-09-08T13:37:00.000-04:00

In a careful statement, Schwarzenegger press secretary Margita Thompson invoked the voter approval in March 2000 of Proposition 22, which said: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

"The governor believes the matter should be determined not by legislative action — which would be unconstitutional — but by court decision or another vote of the people of our state," the statement said. "We cannot have a system where the people vote and the Legislature derails that vote."

Not judicial activism??
A vote of the people put Nazi's in power.
Now, i can understand that some people may be confused, but the role of marriage isn't simply procreation; it's about providing a safe, stable, loving environment and model to children. It doesn't stop with the parents, but it certainly begins there. It's not about promoting a homosexual lifestyle; it's about promoting a model of healthy, loving and monogamous relationships. It's about human rights ~ that sexual orientation should preclude you from being married or raising children or anything else.

A law which draws a distinction amongst adults about who is eligible for such-and-such rights is segragation, pure and simple. They can't be "separate, but equal" we know that doesn't work.