The Seattle Times: Politics: House approves major overhaul of Endangered Species Act
More feeding at the trough from the biggest government welfare recipients of all- the wealthy. This time they want to kill endangered species to do so.

WASHINGTON — The House yesterday approved a top-to-bottom overhaul of the landmark 1973 Endangered Species Act, perhaps the nation's most powerful environmental law.

By a vote of 229-193, lawmakers passed legislation that could greatly expand private-property rights under the environmental law that is credited with helping keep the bald eagle from extinction, but that has led to battles over species such as the spotted owl, the snail darter and the red-legged frog.

The White House supports the legislation, although it wants some changes. The Senate has not taken up companion legislation and is unlikely to accept such drastic revisions in the law, so compromises are likely if the bill is ever to become law.

The bill that passed would require the government to compensate property owners if steps needed to protect species thwarted development plans. It also would make political appointees responsible for some scientific determinations and would stop the government from designating areas as "critical habitat."

The changes were pushed through by the chairman of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif. The rancher contends the current rules unduly burden landowners and lead to costly lawsuits while doing too little to save plants and animals.

Many Democrats and moderate Republicans said Pombo's bill would eliminate important protections for species and clear the way for large government handouts to property owners.

The article goes on to say that, although the White House is for the destruction of endangered animals habitats, they don't feel comfortable paying out the money. Budget concerns, you see.

Yeah, buddy. Let's hope the Senate can make some sense of this.

And kudos to my (gulp) Republican rep, Vern Ehlers. He voted against this travesty.

There. I said something nice about a Republican. See? I can be reasonable when they are.

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Michigan Democratic Party :DeVos and DeLay: Twin Pillars in the Republican Culture of Corruption
Well. Isn't this interesting.

LANSING-In light of yesterday's criminal indictment against House GOP Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) on a charge of conspiracy to illegally use soft money, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer reminded Michigan voters of the connection between DeLay and Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. Both Republicans have abused soft money political contributions and both have given each other thousands of dollars over the years to support their political ambitions.

"Republicans from Washington D.C. to Michigan continue to put politics before policy," said Brewer. "The report on DeVos' soft money and corporate tax loophole and Tom DeLay's indictment are the latest examples of what's become the Republican culture of corruption."

DeLay's soft money indictment comes as DeVos refuses to explain reports on the tax loophole inserted into the 1997 budget bill which benefited Amway nearly $300 million. Amway's tax giveaway occurred while Dick DeVos was president of the company and after Amway and the DeVos family had given millions of dollars in soft money to various Republican groups during the 1990's.

DeVos and his Political Action Committee (PAC), Restoring the American Dream have exchanged thousands of dollars with DeLay, his campaign committee and his PAC, Americans for a Republican Majority. DeVos gave the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee $1,000 in 2000 and gave DeLay's PAC $5,000 in 1999. DeLay's PAC in turn gave DeVos' PAC $5,000 over the course of two weeks in the fall of 2000.

Perhaps this needs to be investigated a bit further, yes? It's a loose connection, but, hey, it works for me. Glad to see the MDP get on the "culture of corruption" bandwagon.

Let's Googlebomb "culture of corruption", shall we?

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Bennett: Black Abortions Would Lower Crime - Yahoo! News
Wow. Just...wow. I can't believe this guy actually said this.

WASHINGTON - The White House on Friday criticized former Education Secretary William Bennett for remarks linking the crime rate and the abortion of black babies.

Bennett, on his radio show, "Morning in America," was answering a caller's question when he took issue with the hypothesis put forth in a recent book that one reason crime is down is that abortion is up.

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," said Bennett, author of "The Book of Virtues."

He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

Responding later to criticism, Bennett said his comments had been mischaracterized and that his point was that the idea of supporting abortion to reduce crime was "morally reprehensible."

Bennett was education secretary under President Reagan and director of drug control policy when Bush's father was president.

I guess that's the standard defense now. "I was mischaracterized". "I was taken out of context". "It's a partisan witch hunt". Never, ever, ever take personal responsibility. That's the Republican way.

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Conn. to Offer Civil Unions on Oct. 1 - Yahoo! News
Another civilized state heard from...

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut joins Vermont on Saturday as the only states offering same-sex civil unions, but the day may pass with only a few raised glasses of champagne as the first gay couples exchange vows.

Because Oct. 1 falls on a Saturday, only a handful of town clerks' offices plan to be open. Gay rights activists know of some planned ceremonies that day — including one officiated by Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy, who's running for governor — but don't know how many couples will race to apply for civil unions.

"Saturday is going to be a landmark day in the civil rights movement in Connecticut," said state Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, one of a handful of openly gay legislators in Connecticut's General Assembly.

But the law is also creating confusion with some employers who will be required to extend health benefits to same-sex couples.

"I think employers are going to start getting requests (for benefits) as soon as Monday. And they're not prepared," said Bruce Barth, an employee benefits attorney at Robinson and Cole in Hartford.

Connecticut's law passed in April, making it the first state to recognize same-sex unions without court intervention. Laws in Vermont and Massachusetts, which allows gay couples to marry, were created as a result of legal action. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger followed through on his promise Thursday to veto a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

Connecticut will recognize Vermont's civil unions but officials are still researching other states' domestic partnership laws and civil unions granted in foreign countries. But it will not recognize same-sex marriages because its law specifies that marriage is between a man and a woman, a distinction that angers some couples.

Town clerks and justices of the peace spent the past few weeks learning the ins and outs of civil unions. The justices, who are not required to perform civil unions, have been encouraged to conclude civil union ceremonies by pronouncing couples "partners in life" rather than husband and wife. They were also reminded that heterosexual couples aren't eligible for civil unions.

The 2000 U.S. Census found about 7,400 same-sex couples in Connecticut, but there's no way to know how many might seek civil unions.

And so begins the clusterfuck that will be the law in this area. We do recognize Vermont, because it uses the word "civil union", we don't recognize Mass., or Canada, for that matter, because it uses the word "marriage". Someone call a lawyer, there's a suit waiting to happen. Also, why should heteros be denied a civil union? That's discrimination too.

But cheers to Connecticut for giving this a go!

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DeLay Must Appear in Austin on Charge - Yahoo! News
Pics and prints! I want those prints run through the computer. God knows what else 'ol Tom has been up to.

AUSTIN, Texas - The next step in the criminal proceedings against Republican leader Tom DeLay is a trip to Austin to be fingerprinted and photographed.

DeLay was indicted Wednesday on one count of criminal conspiracy for his alleged role in a campaign finance scheme that helped give Republicans power in the Texas House and in Congress.

DeLay's attorneys were working out the details of when the 11-term congressman would return to Texas in hopes of saving him from further embarrassment, they said.

"What we're trying to avoid is Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs, and fingerprinted and photographed. That's uncalled for and I don't think that's going to happen," said Dick DeGuerin, DeLay's attorney.

Earle, the Travis County district attorney, said it is up to the court to decide how DeLay would be arraigned.

It was not immediately clear whether DeLay would have to go through booking after responding to the summons for arraignment, said his attorney Bill White.

A bond amount would be set beforehand so Delay could immediately pay it and avoid a stay in jail. He also could waive going before a magistrate to have his rights and charges read to him, said Roger Wade, Travis County Sheriff's Office spokesman.

No bond! He's a flight risk! He might commit more crimes while he's out! Won't someone think of the safety of the community? What about the children???

Damn liberal judges.

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Benefits ruled OK for gay workers' partners
GO JENNIFER!

Hours after a judge's ruling cleared the way, Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Tuesday that she would move ahead on a proposal to extend health care benefits to the same-sex partners of state employees.

Earlier Tuesday, Ingham County Judge Joyce Dragunchuk ruled that a 2004 voter-approved amendment to Michigan's Constitution defining marriage does not prohibit state and local governments, universities and schools from providing health care and other benefits to the gay and lesbian partners of employees.

Dragunchuk agreed with a coalition of interest groups, unions, universities and Granholm who argued that benefits provided to same-sex partners of public employees do not constitute recognition of a marriage or a marriagelike relationship.

The ruling was the first judicial interpretation of the amendment since voters approved Proposal 2 -- 59% to 41% -- in November. But it is likely not the last. Both sides in the case -- Attorney General Mike Cox argued against same-sex benefits -- are expected to appeal adverse rulings as far as legally possible.

A dozen public universities in Michigan offer benefits to same-sex couples along with at least that many other agencies, including cities and school districts. The actual number of couples who receive benefits is not available, but advocates estimate that fewer than 1% of employees in most workplaces would apply for the benefits.

Still, the issue has symbolic importance for those on both sides of the issue.

Granholm had suspended an agreement with state employees to add partner benefits after the 2004 election.

Representatives of the coalition and the 21 same-sex couples named in the lawsuit who receive or hope to receive benefits were jubilant Tuesday.

"We're very happy about it," said Kary Moss, executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which represented the couples in the lawsuit.

Opponents of benefits for same-sex partners of public employees argue the amendment was intended to restrict recognition of marriage or marriagelike arrangements to opposite-sex couples and that health care benefits provided to a spouse should be barred.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan based in Midland, said it would have been surprising if Dragunchuk had not ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Two gay political actions groups endorsed her for election, he said.

"Judge Dragunchuk was strongly endorsed by homosexual activists," said Glenn, coauthor of the amendment and whose group initiated the amendment campaign.

"Waaaahhh!", says Gary Glenn. Man, I've heard SO much Republican whining today, my ears are ringing.

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DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe - Yahoo! News
YEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! Wooo- hoooooo! 'bout time.

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

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

The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.

The grand jury action is expected to have immediate consequences in the House, where DeLay is largely responsible for winning passage of the Republican legislative program. House Republican Party rules require leaders who are indicted to temporarily step aside from their leadership posts.

Score one for the good guys!

Update: Reports say this is a two-year FELONY.

I like the way that sounds. Tom DeLay, convicted felon. Does Texas allow it's felons to vote?

Hee hee hee.

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Chicago Cubs : News : Prior to start Cubs' final home game
Last chance to see Wrigley this year. It's on WGN, 2:20 EST.

Mark Prior will make his final start of the season in the Cubs' final home game on Wednesday against the Pirates.

The last time Prior faced the Bucs, on July 14, he struck out 10 batters and held Pittsburgh to one run -- unearned -- on two hits over eight innings.

The Cubs are 37-42 at Wrigley Field this year. Only once has the team has finished above .500 overall with a losing record at home. In 1995, the Cubs were 73-71 despite a 34-38 record at Wrigley Field.

Derrek Lee is trying to become the first Cub to win a National League batting title since Bill Buckner did so in 1980. The last Cub to finish in the top five in the batting race was Mark Grace, who hit .331, good for fifth in the NL in 1996.

The Cubs will wrap up their season at Houston in a four-game series starting Thursday. The Astros, leaders in the Wild Card race, have been cleared to host the series after Hurricane Rita spared the city from serious damage.

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DeLay Probe Winds Down; Charges May Loom
Oh please oh please oh please pretty please. Make my day.

WASHINGTON -- A Texas grand jury's recent interest in conspiracy charges could lead to last-minute criminal indictments _ possibly against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay _ as it wraps up its investigation Wednesday into DeLay's state political organization, according to lawyers with knowledge of the case.

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

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

The Associated Press spoke to several lawyers familiar with the case, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. DeLay, R-Texas, said Tuesday that prosecutors have interviewed him. He has insisted he committed no crimes and says Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, is pursuing the case for political reasons.

The disclosure came as congressional officials said top House Republicans were quietly considering how to respond if an indictment were issued.

House GOP rules require any member of the elected leadership to step down temporarily if indicted, and it would be up to the rank and file to select an interim replacement. Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., could make a recommendation, whether choosing to elevate another member of the leadership or tapping an alternative to reduce the possibility of a struggle if DeLay were cleared and then sought to reclaim his post.

I'm dreaming of a special jail built just to hold Tom, Bill, George, Dick, Karl....and Lynndie England with a bunch of new leashes...

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Brown Shifts Blame for Katrina Response - Yahoo! News
This little twit needs to be strung up by his thumbs and left without water and food for a few days. The results of cronyism in action. Unfortunately the results of this temper tantrum have drawn attention away from a very valid point the son of a bitch made later- FEMA has been gutted for the sake of "Homeland Security", whatever the hell that is.

WASHINGTON - A combative Michael Brown blamed the Louisiana governor, the New Orleans mayor and even the Bush White House that appointed him for the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina in a fiery appearance Tuesday before Congress. In response, lawmakers alternately lambasted and mocked the former FEMA director.

House members' scorching treatment of Brown, in a hearing stretching nearly 6 1/2 hours, underscored how he has become an emblem of the deaths, lingering floods and stranded survivors after the Aug. 29 storm. Brown resigned Sept. 12 after being relieved of his onsite command of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response effort three days earlier.

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," Brown told a special panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe. Most Democrats, seeking an independent investigation, stayed away to protest what they called an unfair probe of the Republican administration by GOP lawmakers.

"I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together," Brown said. "I just couldn't pull that off."

Blanco vehemently denied that she waited until the eve of the storm to order an evacuation of New Orleans. She said her order came on the morning of Aug. 27 — two days before the storm — resulting in 1.3 million people evacuating the city.

"Such falsehoods and misleading statements, made under oath before Congress, are shocking," Blanco said in a statement.

Come out and say it, Kathleen. He was flat-out lying in this testimony. Perjury charges, anyone? Why not?

All this denial of responsibility has taken away from a very important aspect- even though this man is totally incompetent, what he has said about FEMA is true. Here is the money shot- the buck really stops at Chertoff and those higher up.

Brown described FEMA as a politically powerless arm of Homeland Security, which he said had siphoned more than $77 million from his agency over the past three years. Additionally, he said Homeland Security cut FEMA budget requests — including one for hurricane preparedness — before they were ever presented to Congress.

Since FEMA is now part of HS, there really needs to be an investigation of HS. Where in the hell is all that money that we gave them? But, because Brown looks like a total fool, I have a feeling this will be put all on him and that will be the end of the story. Chertoff will slide away unscathed.

C'mon media. Dig a little deeper on this. The Department of Homeland Security has a total budget of damn near $40 billion dollars, and it's homepage brags of their response times and preparedness. What have they been doing with themselves for the past four years? Someone needs to find out.

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WOODTV.com & WOOD TV8 - Grand Rapids news and weather - Same Sex Benefits Ruling
I'm sure this won't be the last we hear of this.

(Kalamazoo, September 27, 2005) An Ingham County Circuit judge has ruled domestic partners of public employees can get health benefits. On Tuesday, Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk disagreed and said "Health care benefits for a spouse are benefits of employment, not benefits of marriage."

The ruling comes six months after Attorney General Mike Cox ruled that same-sex partners of public employees could not get health insurance. Cox stated the passing of Proposal Two in November saying that marriage is defined as a union between one and one woman meant that Michigan voters did not want public money supporting domestic partners.

24 Hour News 8 called both the Kalamazoo city manager's office and city attorney, our calls were not returned. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Mike Cox says he is disappointed in the ruling and is considering whether to appeal.

Oh, I'm sure it will be appealed. And I'm sure it will be brought up as a big boogieman in next year's election, too. Why, things would be just peachy if it weren't for the darn gays getting health insurance, right Dick?

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Consumer Confidence Plummets in September - Yahoo! News
Oh good God. No wonder my sales have been poor.

NEW YORK - Consumer confidence plummeted almost 19 points in September, its biggest drop in 15 years, as Americans worried about the economic fallout of Hurricane Katrina and rising gasoline prices.

The Conference Board said its Consumer Confidence Index, compiled from a survey of U.S. households, dropped 18.9 points to 86.6, from a revised reading of 105.5.

That marked the biggest fall since October 1990 when the index fell 23 points to 62.6 in the wake of the recession. The September reading was also the lowest level since October 2003, when it registered 81.7.

Analysts had expected the September reading to be 98.

"Hurricane Katrina, coupled with soaring gasoline prices and a less optimistic job outlook, has pushed consumer confidence to its lowest level in nearly two years and created a degree of uncertainty and concern about the short-term future," Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center, said in a statement. "Historically, shocks have had a short-term impact on consumer confidence,especially on consumers' expectations."

Franco added, however, that as rebuilding efforts in the aftermath of Katrina take hold and job growth gains momentum, consumers' confidence should rebound and return to "more positive levels by yearend or early 2006."

Economists closely track consumer confidence because consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of all U.S. economic activity.

And my heat bill just went up 21%. Yikes.

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It's All About Football:

Atlanta 24, Buffalo 16
Miami 27, Carolina 24 (booo)
Cincinnati 24, Chicago 7
Indianapolis 13, Cleveland 6 (what is up with the Colt's offense?)
Jacksonville 26, N.Y. Jets 20 (OT)
Minnesota 33, New Orleans 16
Philadelphia 23, Oakland 20
Tampa Bay 17, Green Bay 16
St. Louis 31, Tennessee 27
Seattle 37, Arizona 12
Dallas 34, San Francisco 31 (grrrrr)
New England 23, Pittsburgh 20
San Diego 45, N.Y. Giants 23
Kansas City 10, Denver 30

10-4. And I was cheated on the Steelers game! (just kidding. If Randall-El (sp?) hadn't been such a hot-dog, they might have pulled it off.)

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AlterNet: Government by Temper Tantrum
Once again, Molly Ivins nails it. Go read.

There's a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a vet in charge instead!

The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit. You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and safety.

Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what? Nanny-nanny boo-boo.

The terrible lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that public policy is not a political gotcha game. The public interest is not well-served by appointing incompetents or anti-competents to positions of responsibility. Public policy is about our lives.

She's right. There is a big story here- someone needs to name names and put it all in one big concise package- these people are unfit for their jobs. Start with Bolton and work your way down. Hell, start with Cheney and work your way down.

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FEMA Plans to Reimburse Faith Groups for Aid
Buying off the church. As much as it pisses me off, I have to laugh when I see these guys getting into bed with the government. Perhaps there needs to be some, oh, I don't know, TAXATION on churches if they are going to be so involved in political affairs? Hmmm?

After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.

"I believe it's appropriate for the federal government to assist the faith community because of the scale and scope of the effort and how long it's lasting," said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response with the Red Cross.

Civil liberties groups called the decision a violation of the traditional boundary between church and state, accusing FEMA of trying to restore its battered reputation by playing to religious conservatives.

"What really frosts me about all this is, here is an administration that didn't do its job and now is trying to dig itself out by making right-wing groups happy," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Well, I guess people don't need to donate to their churches anymore if they are going to receive taxpayer bucks. Funny how this group tried to ween people off of "big government" by pushing them onto their local (religious) charities and community donations, but then turns around and gives those same churches some "big government" money. Watch as the churches become just another arm of "big government". Ha ha, suckers. Time for some regulations.

And I'm done with the Red Cross. I've read way too many stories of how the mismanage money and pay their own people lavish salaries. I think I'd rather give to an independent local group than pay for somebody's mansion.

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CBS News Hurricane Rita Blog September 26, 2005
HAHAHAHAHA!

CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate it's response following Hurricane Katrina.

This is a joke, right? No? Well, it's still pretty funny. And par for the course...

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US agency says tax breaks too costly, need review - Yahoo! News
Which tax breaks are too costly? The ones that go to YOU, Mr. and Mrs. Middle and Lower Class America! So, kiss them goodbye. Paris needs some new shoes.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tax breaks such as deductions for home mortgage interest and state and local taxes cost the federal government $728 billion last year and need to be reexamined, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report on Friday.

Comptroller General David Walker, who heads the agency, said the government must look at ways to rein in the growth of so-called tax expenditures if it is to avoid huge fiscal deficit problems in future years.

"We're on an imprudent, unsustainable fiscal path," Walker told a news conference. "The status quo is not an option and we're not going to grow our way out of this problem and the sooner we get started the better."

GAO launched the study to help contribute to federal tax reform debate in Washington that was expected to heat up this autumn. A Bush administration tax panel was scheduled to deliver its recommendations by September 30, but a spokeswoman said that will likely be delayed by at least a month due to Hurricane Katrina.

The GAO study said annual federal revenue losses tripled in real terms from $243 billion in 1974 to $728 billion in 2004. Tax expenditures peaked in 2002 at $783 billion before the full effects of the last recession cycled through the Internal Revenue Service.

For most of the last decade, revenue losses from tax expenditures were greater than the federal government's discretionary spending, the GAO said.

The biggest growth in recent years is the exclusion from income tax of employer-paid health insurance benefits, contributing $102.3 billion or 14 percent of the 2004 lost revenues. Deductability of home mortgage interest -- including second homes -- was the second biggest portion at $61.5 billion or 8.4 percent of the total.

What tax cuts? Heh heh. We are really screwed.

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Many Contracts for Storm Work Raise Questions - New York Times
And the beat goes on...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 - Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La.

The first detailed tally of commitments from federal agencies since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast four weeks ago shows that more than 15 contracts exceed $100 million, including 5 of $500 million or more. Most of those were for clearing away the trees, homes and cars strewn across the region; purchasing trailers and mobile homes; or providing trucks, ships, buses and planes.

More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors - the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton - that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

Some industry and government officials questioned the costs of the debris-removal contracts, saying the Army Corps of Engineers had allowed a rate that was too high. And Congressional investigators are looking into the $568 million awarded to AshBritt, a Pompano Beach, Fla., company that was a client of the former lobbying firm of Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

Some businesses awarded large contracts have long records of performing similar work, but they also have had some problems. CH2M Hill and the Fluor Corporation, two global engineering companies awarded a total of $250 million in contracts, were previously cited by regulators for safety violations at a weapons plant cleanup.

The Bechtel Corporation, awarded a contract that could be worth $100 million, is under scrutiny for its oversight of the "Big Dig" construction project in Boston. And Kellogg, Brown & Root, which was given $60 million in contracts, was rebuked by federal auditors for unsubstantiated billing from the Iraq reconstruction and criticized for bills like $100-per-bag laundry service. All of the companies have publicly defended their performance.

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, complained that FEMA and other federal agencies were delivering too much of the work to giant corporations with political connections, instead of local companies or minority-owned businesses.

"There is just more of the good-old-boy system, taking care of its political allies," Mr. Thompson said. "FEMA and the others have put out these contracts in such a haphazard manner, I don't know how they can come up with anything that is accountable to the taxpayers."

Can't trust the Republicans with the cookie jar. This should be the theme going into 2006.

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Chicago Cubs : News :Rain puts damper on Cubs rally
I blog this only because the Cubs season was officially declared DOA with yesterday's loss.

CHICAGO -- The Chicago Cubs were officially eliminated from the National League Wild Card race on Saturday.

Craig Biggio and Lance Berkman each hit first-inning home runs off Carlos Zambrano, and Morgan Ensberg drove in two runs to power the Houston Astros to a 8-3 victory over the Cubs.

"A couple balls caught too much of the plate early," Cubs manager Dusty Baker said of the early homers. "We were still in the ballgame, and we ended up giving away like four runs on defense. You can't give away runs in the big leagues. We didn't play very good defense today."

No, Dusty, you didn't. As a matter of fact, you didn't play very good defense all year, you didn't play very good offense all year, you didn't manage very well all year, and if it wasn't for Derek Lee this team just might be in the frickin' basement. Thank God for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They only thing you and your sorry-ass team did do well all year is make constant excuses for yourself and your piss poor performance.

*sigh*

Here's to better days. Fire Dusty now, perhaps we will have them.

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The Observer | International | Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina
I demand the right to arm bears.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

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It's All About Football:

Lots of toss-ups this week. Thank God the Lions aren't playing.

Atlanta at Buffalo

Carolina at Miami (go Panthers!)

Cincinnati at Chicago (I refuse to believe the Bears are any good)

Cleveland at Indianapolis

Jacksonville at N.Y. Jets

New Orleans at Minnesota (The Vikings wake up)

Oakland at Philadelphia (Oakland looked almost bad as Detroit last week vs. KC)

Tampa Bay at Green Bay (I almost want to take Green Bay- I figure Brett's pride has to kick in here some time)

Tennessee at St. Louis (Gadzooks, I just don't know)

Arizona at Seattle

Dallas at San Francisco (screw you, Dallas)

New England at Pittsburgh (The game of the week, I hope it's on TV!)

N.Y. Giants at San Diego

Kansas City at Denver

Open date: Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Washington

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WZZM 13 Grand Rapids - Granholm Blames Republicans For Continued Unemployment
Drastic differences in the news coverage around here. Channel 8 had Rick Albin up licking DeVos's boots in Mackinac, while 13 has this as a headline on their website.

LANSING, Mich. - Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm is criticizing Republicans for not acting on her proposals she says would improve Michigan's economy.

Granholm made many of the job creation proposals during her State of the State address in February. She said Republicans are not helping fix Michigan's economy, which has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates.

Granholm's comments came as Republicans were headed to Mackinac Island for a weekend leadership conference. Republicans will spend part of their time talking about challenging Granholm when she is up for re-election in 2006.

Republicans said Granholm's comments are a reaction to her declining job approval ratings.

Is 13 trying to court the more left-leaning citizens of this area? This isn't the first time I've noticed something like this.

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Frist's HCA Stock Sale Being Investigated - Yahoo! News
Heh heh.

WASHINGTON - The Securities and Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors are investigating Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's sale of stock in HCA Inc., the hospital operating company founded by his family.

In a statement released Friday, the Nashville-based company said federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York issued a subpoena for documents HCA believes are related to the sale of its stock by the senator.

Frist's office confirmed the SEC is looking into the sale.

The SEC also contacted HCA on Friday to informally request copies of the subpoenaed documents, HCA spokesman Jeff Prescott said. "We of course will comply with that request," he said.

Frist traded using only public information, and only to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said in an e-mail Friday.

"Not surprisingly, the Securities and Exchange Commission contacted Senator Frist's office after the story appeared in the press about the sale of his Hospital Corporation of America stock," Stevenson said. "The majority leader will provide the SEC any information that it needs with respect to this matter."

Frist spokeswoman Amy Call again declined to comment on the timing of the sale, saying, "His only objective in selling the stock was to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest."

Excellent.

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As Many As 24 Killed in Texas Bus Fire - Yahoo! News
This just breaks my heart.

WILMER, Texas - A bus carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was rocked by explosions early Friday on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing as many as 24 people, authorities said.

"Deputies were unable to get everyone off the bus," Dallas County Sheriff's Department spokesman Don Peritz said. He said he believes 24 people were killed, but that number could change.

The bus, with about 45 people on board, had been traveling since Thursday. Peritz declined to give details on who the passengers were except to say they were from a nursing home in Bellaire, an upscale enclave within Houston.

Early indications were that it caught fire because of mechanical problems, then passengers' oxygen tanks started exploding, Peritz said. He said the brakes may have been on fire.

The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a lengthy backup on Interstate 45 already congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast. The bus was reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell with large blue tarps covering many seats, surrounded by police cars and ambulances.

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Granholm For Governor: Home
It's 2006! (No, really!) Do you know where your favorite candidate is? Mine is on the air as of now.

Welcome to the Campaign Headquarters!

Please sign up for Team Granholm right now and start receiving campaign updates and news alerts. After that, become a volunteer. Make a contribution. Send an e-Postcard. However you can help, whatever you can do to join our fight, this is your one-stop shop.

Sign Jen's petition for lower gas prices!

I told 'em to send a yard sign. It will look good sticking out of the snow.

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It's All About NOAA:

I took down all my pretty pictures of the satellite views of Rita because it was slowing down this blog, and half of the time the past few days I can't get the site to open.

SO- if and when things slow down, check out http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/ sometime. Awesome pictures.

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Oil leaps above $68 - Yahoo! News
OK OK! I'm going this morning to fill up the tank. Y'all have scared me into it.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil raced above $68 a barrel on Thursday as Hurricane Rita bore down on Gulf of Mexico and threatened to batter oil and gas infrastructure that is struggling to recover from Katrina.

So far, six refineries in Texas have been shut down as a precaution as Rita, now a maximum Category 5 storm, aimed her 175 mph (280 kph) winds on Texas, home to a quarter of U.S. refining capacity. She is expected to hit land by early Saturday.

U.S. light crude was up $1.30 at $68.10 a barrel at 1150 GMT, just below Wednesday's three-week high of $68.27.

London Brent crude was up 98 cents at $65.71.

"There is an awful lot of potential for damage," said Mark Keenan of London-based fund MPC.

Analysts predicted the biggest impact would be on products, as lost refining capacity aggravates a shortage of refined fuels, while overall crude stocks are comfortable.

"Certainly for product prices, the only way is up," Keenan said.

Analysts warned any damage to natural gas facilities could also have a very bullish impact because lost supplies would be far more difficult to replace than lost crude.

"The physical implications are potentially quite significant, particularly for heating oil, heading into winter in the United States, and natural gas," said Matthew Schwab, managing director of AIG Financial Products Corp.

But for now, gasoline futures were showing the sharpest gains among refined products.

Gasoline futures rose 10.68 cents to $2.1599 a gallon. Heating oil was up 4.88 cents to $2.0875.

I thought I could ride this out with the half-tank I have, but the doom and gloom people are gettting to me.

How in the hell am I going to heat this house this winter?

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The Lakeland Tigers
The 2004 Whitecaps, minus a few who were promoted up to Erie, tore up the Florida State League this year. Although they lost the championship game, the fifth game in a best of five, in 10 innings- it sounds like they had a helluva year.

When they started here in 2004, they were one of the worst Whitecaps teams I have ever seen.

Offensively, the Tigers finished second in home runs (129), second in runs scored (700), and third in team batting average (.276). They had six players belt 15 or more homers and hit six in a game twice, both times against teams that wound up in the playoffs.

And if their pitching, defense and hitting were not already impressive enough, consider this team's speed and baserunning prowess. Tiger runners put constant pressure on opposing defenses by stealing 166 bases during the regular season. Vince Blue stole more by himself (40) than the entire Dunedin team (30).

Overall, Lakeland finished in the top three in 15 different team defensive, offensive, and pitching statistical categories.

Lakeland has never had a team with a higher fielding percentage (.978), team batting average (.277), home run total (129) or saves by its closer (29).

When the regular season ended on Sept. 4, not only did the 2005 L-Tigers also have the highest winning percentage in franchise history (.639), but the best record of any of the 150 teams playing any level of full-season professional baseball in North America. In addition, they had the best record in pro ball within their own division (60-27), as well as on the road (46-23).

Good luck next year guys. The log jam of players starts at AA.

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Rita now Category 4 hurricane - Yahoo! News
Fill up your tank yet?

MIAMI (Reuters) - After lashing the Florida Keys, Hurricane Rita was upgraded on Wednesday into a more powerful Category 4 storm as it headed across the Gulf of Mexico on a course that could take it to Texas and dump more rain on Katrina-battered Louisiana.

Rita's winds increased to 135 mph (193-kph) winds as it headed into the Gulf. The storm hit the Florida Keys but did not get close enough to reach the vulnerable chain of islands with its most destructive forces.

The upgrade put Rita in the same strength classification as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama last month.

Rita's most likely future track would take it to Texas by the end of the week, raising fears the sprawling storm could bring heavy rains to flooded New Orleans and threaten the recovery of oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico.

I'll put up a link to a new picture as soon as they do. No one has yelled at me yet.

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Frist Sold Hospital Shares Before Drop - Yahoo! News
Tell me again these guys aren't crooked.

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.

Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.

Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.

HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.

The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.

Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.

To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.

Hmmmm.

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Reid seeks 'mainstream' nominee for US court - Yahoo! News
The next one will be the big fight...and I don't expect anything resembling "mainstream" coming from Bush. Batten down the hatches.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said he will ask President George W. Bush on Wednesday that his second nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court be "mainstream, not extreme."

With the court's balance of power likely at stake, Reid said he will make his case at a White House breakfast meeting with Bush and fellow Senate leaders.

The president's first Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, appears headed toward Senate confirmation next week as the nation's 17th chief justice. Attention now is beginning to focus on who Bush may offer as his second nominee. That person would likely face a tougher fight.

Easing Roberts' path toward confirmation is the belief he would not shift the balance of power on the nine-member court. He would succeed the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had been the court's conservative anchor for three decades.

A tougher fight is expected over Bush's next nominee, who would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative who has been the swing vote on the often bitterly divided court.

On Tuesday, Reid said there was no doubt that Roberts would be confirmed but that he would vote against the 50-year-old conservative.

Reid said while Roberts, a federal appeals judge the past two years, is a smart man, "I'm not too sure if his heart is as big as his head."

As for Bush's pending nominee, Reid said, "We want him to give us a candidate who is mainstream, not extreme."

"A number of candidates who have been talked about are extreme," Reid said.

Reid did not name names but said he would find as problematic any of the 10 federal appeals court nominees who Democrats blocked during Bush's first term.

Give 'em hell, Harry.

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World has slim chance to stop flu pandemic - Yahoo! News
And we worry about hurricanes...here's some cheery news that keeps flying just a bit below the radar.

NOUMEA, New Caledonia (Reuters) - The initial outbreak of what could explode into a bird flu pandemic may affect only a few people, but the world will have just weeks to contain the deadly virus before it spreads and kills millions.

Chances of containment are limited because the potentially catastrophic infection may not be detected until it has already spread to several countries, like the SARS virus in 2003. Avian flu vaccines developed in advance will have little impact on the pandemic virus.

It will take scientists four to six months to develop a vaccine that protects against the pandemic virus, by which time thousands could have died. There is little likelihood a vaccine will even reach the country where the pandemic starts.

That is the scenario outlined on Tuesday by Dr Hitoshi Oshitani, the man who was on the frontline in the battle against SARS and now leads the fight against avian flu in Asia.

"SARS in retrospect was an easy virus to contain," said Oshitani, the World Health Organization's Asian communicable diseases expert.

"The pandemic virus is much more difficult, maybe impossible, to contain once it starts," he told Reuters at a WHO conference in Noumea, capital of the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. "The geographic spread is historically unprecedented."

Oshitani said nobody knew when a pandemic would occur, it could be within weeks or years, but all the conditions were in place, save one -- a virus that transmitted from human to human.

The contagious H5N1 virus, which has killed 64 people in four Asian countries since it was first detected in 2003, might not be the one to trigger the pandemic, he said. Instead a genetically different strain could develop that passes between humans.

While bird flu cases continued to spread throughout Asia, with Indonesia this week placed on alert after reporting four deaths, Oshitani said the winter months of December, January and February would see an acceleration in cases, and the more human cases the greater risk that the virus would mutate.

I've been meaning to read "The Stand" again.

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It's All About Football:

Baltimore 10 Tennessee 25
Buffalo 3 Tampa Bay 19
Detroit 6 Chicago 38
Jacksonville 3 Indianapolis 10
Minnesota 8 Cincinnati 37
New England 17 Carolina 27
Pittsburgh 27 Houston 7
San Francisco 3 Philadelphia 42
Atlanta 18 Seattle 21
St. Louis 17 Arizona 12
Cleveland 26 Green Bay 24
Miami 7 N.Y. Jets 17
San Diego 17 Denver 20
Kansas City 23 Oakland 17
N.Y. Giants 27 New Orleans 10
Washington 14 Dallas 13

10-6 for the week. Sure wish I'd had some money on those Panthers!

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House GOP Scraps Plan for Joint Probe on Hurricane Response - Los Angeles Times
Look what happens when Democrats stand together. Gee, maybe they should try it more often.

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans signaled today that they have abandoned their plan to conduct a joint House-Senate probe of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

In announcing a joint probe this month, the Republican leadership had said it would be the most efficient way to investigate the administration's much-criticized initial response to the hurricane. But today, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) conceded that he could not overcome Democratic opposition to a joint investigation.

The Democratic leadership has refused to appoint members to a joint committee, citing the lack of equal representation of Democrats on the panel, and the lack of power to issue subpoenas that the majority opposed. Democrats also have insisted on an independent inquiry.

Democratic opposition has left Republicans little maneuvering room for mounting a credible probe. With the joint investigation apparently off the table, Republicans can only hope that Democrats will participate in each chamber's separate investigation. It was far from clear today that Democrats would do that.

Stick to your guns, kids.

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Scenes I'd Like To See:

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Hurricane Katrina Polls
Ooops! Speechie-no-workie. What now, Georgie? Wait...don't answer that!

September 18, 2005--Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans now say that President Bush has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. That's down from 39% before his speech from New Orleans.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 41% give the President poor marks for handling the crisis, that's up 37% before the speech.

Fifty percent (50%) of Americans favor the main proposal from that speech--a federal commitment of $200 billion to help rebuild New Orleans. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are opposed and 23% are not sure.

The spending plan has not been well received by conservative voters--just 43% favor the huge federal commitment partisan while 37% are opposed. This is especially striking given how supportive the President's base has remained throughout his Administration.

The President's reconstruction plan is favored by 66% of liberal voters. Still, only 10% of liberals give the President a good or an excellent rating for handling the crisis.

Following the speech, the President's rating for handling the Katrina crisis fell eight points among Republicans (from 71% good or excellent to 63%). The President also draws good or excellent marks from 11% of Democrats and 31% of those not affiliated with either major political party.

Heh heh heh. C'mon Dems, there is a hole in this defensive line big enough to drive a tank through. What the fuck are you waiting for?

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It's All About Football:

Back in da day we used to pick football games and keep track of who did the best. The prize was "bragging rights", or something, I don't remember. I just know that I won one year.

Anyway, inspired by Ogie- here are my picks for this week. Not going to worry about scores- it's too much work. :-)

I pick based from the gut, and from a place of affinity with the Detroit Lions (because I live here), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (because I have visited there- and the spirit surrounding the Bucs is phenomenal), the Carolina Panthers (for Natalie), the Green Bay Packers (for Mom, although I think they are in for a bad year), the Indianapolis Colts (for my youth).

So here we go. Keep in mind that I haven't been following football as close as I used to. The winners in bold.

Sunday, Sep. 18

Baltimore at Tennessee
(I think the Titans are pretty much used up, but Baltimore lost it's QB last week (?) so this might be closer than I think)

Buffalo at Tampa Bay
(Tampa, the surprise team this year. I have the utmost faith in Jon Gruden)

Detroit at Chicago
(I think the Lions might be for real. But I think that every year, and I'm proven wrong. The Bears looked lackluster last week- as they have for years)

Jacksonville at Indianapolis
(Colts!)

Minnesota at Cincinnati
(I truly believe Minnesota sucks worse than you think they do)

New England at Carolina
(Upset pick of the week- but I realize this is pretty far out on the limb. I wouldn't put money on it)

Pittsburgh at Houston
(Pitt could go all the way)

San Francisco at Philadelphia
(Iggles bounces back)

Atlanta at Seattle
(another upset pick. I still can't believe that Atlanta is for real, but maybe they are)

St. Louis at Arizona
(Not sure I believe the hype about the Cards being any good)

Cleveland at Green Bay
(Sorry, Mom- but Green Bay has a tendency to beat Green Bay. I will gladly apologize if the Pack turns it around)

Miami at N.Y. Jets
(Miami might be another surprise this year. I could be very wrong about that)

San Diego at Denver
(Toss up. I just don't know)

Kansas City at Oakland
(Another toss up. This division confuses the hell out of me)

Monday, Sep. 19

N.Y. Giants at New Orleans
(The feel-good Saints party stops here, although I'm rooting for them)

Washington at Dallas
(I hate Dallas, but Washington looked pretty bad last week)

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They Shoot News Anchors, Don't They?
Interesting story of the media and the role they play in shaping perception. They came alive for just a second, and then quickly reverted back to the pabulum that passes for news. I would love to see some documents that purposely tell journalists to "put a happy face" on this tragedy.

At first only CNN appeared not to have thoroughly read the proverbial memo. It was the only network, on air and on its Web site, to compare and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of each other. It was CNN that posted the first full transcript of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's profanity- and passion-filled September 2 interview on local radio. It was also CNN that first exposed the gruesome nature of the conditions at the Superdome, at the convention center and in the hospital corridors. Its broadcasters were the first to keep a heart-wrenching online blog during Katrina. Even as late as September 6, political correspondent Ed Henry was the first to counter the claims by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that local officials and not the feds were to blame, by reporting that congressional Republicans, in a secret confab, were giving the Bush administration a big fat F.

Then the fix was in.

For the first 120 hours after Hurricane Katrina, TV journalists were let off their leashes by their mogul owners, the result of a rare conjoining of flawless timing (summer's biggest vacation week) and foulest tragedy (America's worst natural disaster). All of a sudden, broadcasters narrated disturbing images of the poor, the minority, the aged, the sick and the dead, and discussed complex issues like poverty, race, class, infirmity and ecology that never make it on the air in this swift-boat/anti-gay-marriage/Michael Jackson media-sideshow era. So began a perfect storm of controversy.

Contrary to the scripture so often quoted in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi, the TV newscasters knew the truth, but the truth did not set them free. Because once the crisis point had passed, most TV journalists went back to business-as-usual, their choke chains yanked by no-longer-inattentive parent-company bosses who, fearful of fallout from fingering Dubya for the FEMA fuckups, decided yet again to sacrifice community need for corporate greed. Too quickly, Katrina's wake was spun into a web of deceit by the Bush administration, then disseminated by the Big Media boys' club. (Karl Rove spent the post-hurricane weekend conjuring up ways to shift blame.)

If big media look like they're propping up W's presidency, they are. Because doing so is good for corporate coffers - in the form of government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks, regulatory relaxations and security favors. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat, "It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one."

When it comes to NBC's parent company, GE's No. 1 and No. 2, Jeffrey Immelt and Bob Wright, are avowed Republicans, as are Time Warner's Dick Parsons (CNN) and News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch (Fox News Channel). (Forget that Murdoch's No. 2, Peter Chernin, and Redstone's co–No. 2, Les Moonves, are avowed Democrats - it's meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are the owners.)

Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. For seemingly eons, Immelt's predecessor, the legendary Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger who boasted openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. (And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch, in 2000, ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore.)

As for Immelt, he publicly wishes his MSNBC could be a clone of FNC. Not surprising, since he let his network and cable news cheerlead the run-up to the Iraqi war without ever bothering to tell viewers GE had billions in contracts pending. More than half of Iraq's power grid is GE technology. It was also under Immelt that GE installed a former adviser to W and Condi, who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara "Let 'em eat cake" Bush, as NBC Universal's executive vice president of communications.

And let's not forget that in October 2004, the Republican-controlled House and Senate and White House okayed a $137 billion corporate-tax bill - dubbed "No Lobbyist Left Behind" - that gave a huge $8 billion tax break to GE, which had bankrolled a record $17 million lobbying effort for it. (Meanwhile, in that same bill, House Republicans at the last minute stripped the movie studios of about $1 billion worth of tax credits because of Hollywood's near-constant support of the Democratic Party and its candidates.)

Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that, as early as that first Saturday, certainly by Sunday, inevitably by Monday, and no later than Tuesday, the post-Katrina images and issues were heavily weighted once again toward the power brokers and the predictable. The angry black guys were gone, and the lying white guys were back, hogging all the TV airtime. So many congressional Republicans were lined up on air to denounce the "blame-Bush game" - all the while decrying the Louisiana Democrats-in-charge - that it could have been conga night at the Chevy Chase Country Club.

There is more- it's an interesting read.

Live reports from people on the scene tell of the horror that is still occuring. The media proclaims, "The bars are open!" as if that makes everything OK.

And America goes back to sleep.

My father and I recently had a discussion on how, ultimately, it was the media's job to "sell soap", meaning, it was all about ratings and ad revenue.

Perhaps they have learned that "selling Republicans" is much more lucrative.

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The Globe and Mail: Sex toys coming soon to drugstore near you
Canada is soooo cool...

Better believe it. Shoppers Drug Mart, the country's largest drugstore chain, Wal-Mart Canada and a slew of other stores have entered into agreements to stock their shelves, coast to coast, with a new line of sex toys, discreetly called "sexual well-being products."

The move is especially surprising for Wal-Mart, which doesn't sell video games rated "adult-only" and recently removed a magazine from one of its stores after a customer complained that it was too sexual.

But Wal-Mart Canada spokesman Kevin Groh said the product line is a good fit, as the company caters to the Canadian mainstream and, as such, carries products that reflect mainstream tastes.

He added, however, that some of Wal-Mart's customers will undoubtedly disapprove. "It would be naive of us to think every product we stock would meet the approval of every single customer in the store."

Sex toys and Wal-Mart?

According to some sex educators, it underscores a growing acceptance for open discourse about sex in Canada.

"People have a disposition to explore sexuality," said Cory Silverburg, a sex educator and co-owner of Come As You Are, a Toronto sex toy, book and video store. "I'm thrilled to be living in a country where we can do that."

I would love to see them try this here. All the fundies would be apoplectic, and that would be a riot.

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Daily Kos: OK, Fine. It's the Apocalypse.
I love this guy...

The person who is being placed in charge of the Gulf Coast rebuilding effort, in the wake of stunning government bungling of a national disaster due to political patrons who had no expertise in their ostensible "duties" for which they were collecting paychecks: yes, Karl Rove. And apparently, nobody in the media has a problem with this, because we're essentially all used to the notion that the manner in which, for example, primarily-black neighborhoods in New Orleans get rebuilt, or not, is a task best left to the President's loyal election strategist...

True Conservatives are tonight up in arms over the cost of rebuilding New Orleans, and demand budget cuts to pay for it. Budget cuts deemed necessary to pay for the Iraq War? None. Zip. Nada. Well, a few minor levees that nobody really cares about or will ever notice...

Insane Foaming Monkey Conservatives are working themselves into a more foamy state than usual, and apparently have some sort of blastfax campaign going on over the design of the Flight 93 Memorial which -- shudder -- is crescent-shaped. I hereby predict the next wingnut attack will be upon... the accursed, goddamn, communist moon. Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the moon, the news reports will gush, as the rockets are readied in order to square that damn puppy for once and for all...

Pre-Inquisition Conservatives are proudly hawking the notion that dinosaurs and blue-eyed white guys were holding bake sales together 5,000 years ago. Because it's not enough to merely believe God created the universe -- he also specifically planted an entire false history of the universe to screw with you, you sodomy-loving, DNA-believing-in, post-Newtonian bastards. You just wait, we're only a few months away from digging up an authentic handcrafted dinosaur saddle that will prove that at least one prehistoric Big 5 Sporting Goods Store survived the Biblical flood. Presuming you're among the Pre-Inquisition Conservatives who acknowledge the existence of dinosaurs at all, mind you -- and if you are, the rest of the non-believing-in-dinosaurs movement hereby condemns you for falling for another of God's devious nature-based soul mousetraps: yep, you're going to Hell.

But hey, on our own side of the ideological divide, I just followed a circuitous trail of links and trackbacks taking me to one single very astute opinion that... ugh. You know, never mind. Insert your own war here, I don't care which one. Suffice it to say that if conservatives had a lock on every half-baked unnecessarily conspiratorial premise on the planet, I'd die a happy man. But they don't, and I won't. The salad fork goes on the left side, dammit, or it proves you may not carry the holy mantle of Blogtopia, which is big and shiny and knows all and is all powerful and likes me better than you and could easily beat Chewbacca in a fight as long as nobody had blasters!

That's it. I'm done. You might as well kill me now, because it's the Apocalypse. All life on this planet is no doubt mere days away from coming to an end, because really -- mankind couldn't possibly get any stupider. Not possible.

In my life, I've seen 70's-era fashions that seemed to be based on the fabric equivalent of haggis. I had to listen to Ronald Freaking Reagan being praised as The Great Cultural Father. I've watched Britney Spears become famous. I've seen a Leading Religious Figure hawk videos during his Happy CouchPotato Prayertime Hour detailing how President Clinton was incontrovertibly a Central American drug lord. I've watched Orwell become praised by the right. I've watched Ozymandias become a Republican military strategy guide. I've seen the pilot episode of Manimal.

And this is worse. This, finally, is the long-awaited Apocalypse. Clearly, Terri Schiavo was the glue holding the last threads of the universe together, just as Tom DeLay had foretold in his Holy But Questionably Legal Checkbook Prophesies.

And I really, honestly feel fine, now that I'm adjusted to the notion.

Well, aside from a slight stinging sensation in the center of my brain. But I'm sure it will pass.

If you want, you can use this as an open thread. Or you can reflect back on how great the universe was, back when it actually existed, and when you, personally, realized the end was near. Good bye, cruel world. Good bye.

Hunter is moving slowly into Mark Morford land, but he writes better...

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House backs hate crime measure protecting gays - Yahoo! News
In general, I have a problem with the term "hate crime". Crime is crime. Assault is assault. Murder is murder. If you feel that the penalties for those crimes need to be enhanced with other charges, then perhaps the original penalties are not stiff enough.

Anyway- I'm still happy to see that THIS current House even considered the rights of gay people. It's nothing short of a miracle.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday unexpectedly backed a measure to expand federal hate crime protection to gay people, a measure that House conservatives had blocked for years.

The Senate has passed similar legislation, which also expanded protections for the disabled, several times in recent years but House conservatives had argued that these cases should be dealt with on a local or state level without additional federal intervention.

This time the hate crime measure was attached to a bipartisan bill known as the Children's Safety Act aimed at tightening reporting requirements for child sex offenders. Companion legislation has not yet moved through the Senate, so the ultimate fate of the gay protection provision is uncertain.

The hate crimes amendment would expand existing federal hate crime program to add sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability to federal hate crime laws. It would give grants to the states to help prosecute such crimes.

Backers of the legislation, a top priority for gay rights and disabled advocacy groups, have been trying to enact it since at least 1998, when the gaps in existing law were highlighted by two heinous crimes -- the dragging death of a black man named James Byrd in Texas and the death of Matthew Shepard.

So, are you saying that some states don't prosecute or investigate crimes because they don't have the money? Sad.

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House Republicans block bid for CIA leak data - Yahoo! News
G.O.P.= Party before country. See my next post for more proof of this.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. congressional committees on Wednesday rejected Democrat-backed resolutions that would have compelled the Bush administration to turn over records relating to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and International Relations Committee, who opposed the resolution, said Congress should await the outcome of a federal investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.

Democrats countered that Republicans were trying to protect President George W. Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove. "We know that this is a political decision because there is potential embarrassment to the administration," said Massachusetts Democratic Rep. William Delahunt (news, bio, voting record).

The resolutions, rejected in committee votes along party lines, sought to force the departments of Justice and State to turn over all documents related to Plame.

Lawyers close to the Plame investigation say there are signs that the 20-month-long inquiry could be wrapped up within weeks. The outcome could have major political implications for Bush, whose approval ratings are already the lowest of his presidency.

Keeping you safe. Er...no, wait...keeping George Bush safe. Yeah, that's it. Read on...

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Senate Kills Bid for Katrina Commission - New York Times
This should read "Senate Republicans kill bid for Katrina Commission".

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.

The New York Democrat's bid to establish the panel -- which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government's disaster response apparatus -- failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles. Clinton got only 44 votes, all from Democrats and independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Fifty-four Republicans all voted no.

''Just as with 9/11, we did not get to the point where we believed we understood what happened until an independent investigation was conducted,'' Clinton said.

The Senate vote is hardly likely to be the last word on whether to create an independent commission or as an alternative a special congressional committee to investigate Katrina. The 9/11 Commission was established in 2002 after resistance from Republicans and the White House, and opinion polls show the public strongly supports the idea. In a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll taken Sept. 8-11, 70 percent of those surveyed supported an independent panel to investigate the government's response to Katrina. Only 29 percent were opposed.

Once again the Republicans as a whole thwart the wishes of the American people. Keep it up boys (and girls). Lots of soundbites for 2006.

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KR Washington Bureau | 09/13/2005 | Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows
Hmmmm.

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

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

So...will Mr. Chertoff be taking any responsibility? Or is he still confused?

Feeling safer now, America?

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A Fatal Incuriosity - New York Times
We have to suck up all the Dowd and Krugman we can- starting next Monday they become part of a "paid subscription" feature only, which means they will virtually disappear from the blogs. Perhaps it's time to start a secret file swapping service for op-ed columnists.

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

Given that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of government domestic investment since the New Deal.

I know exactly how he will handle it, and you do too. He will give all the rebuilding contracts to his buddies and campaign contributers. It has already started. For removal of bodies, we are going with a Texas firm that has been implicated in the illegal dumping of remains. Why? Friend of the family. The intersting thing about that story is that FEMA couldn't seal the deal- Blanco did it.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco subsequently inked a contract with the firm after talks between FEMA and the firm broke down. Kenyon's original deal was secured by the Department of Homeland Security.

In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

And off we go. More rich white people will continue to get richer- and you will ending paying the price at the pump and at your furnace. And God knows where else.

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Bush: 'I take responsibility' - Yahoo! News
What? WHAT? Bush actually takes responsibility for something?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush took responsibility on Tuesday for any failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and acknowledged the storm exposed serious deficiencies at all levels of government four years after the September 11 attacks.

"To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush told a White House news conference at which he openly questioned U.S. preparedness for another storm or a "severe attack."

Bush's rare admission of "serious problems in our response capability" came as the White House stepped up efforts to repair his public standing. Bush will address the nation at 9 p.m. EDT (0100 GMT) on Thursday from hard-hit Louisiana, his fourth visit to the disaster zone since Katrina struck.

Well, George, if you are responsible, maybe you should RESIGN. After all, responsibilities carry consequences when you fail to meet them.

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Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday
On my daily "must-read" is Cheers and Jeers from Bill in Portland Maine. There is a reason this guy wins awards.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Please help the real victims of Hurricane Katrina...

Those poor "fiscal conservative" Republicans. They Approved $54.4 billion for the Iraq War (enacted in April 2003)...plus $70.6 billion (enacted November 2003)...plus $21.5 billion (passed as part of regular appropriations for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2005)...plus $58 billion (enacted April 2005). Our war of choice is costing us $5.6 billion per month and that's just peachy.

They rammed a $530 billion Medicare bill through Congress in the middle of the night and that felt soooo goooood. (the original price tag, you might remember, was $400 billion. But what's $130 billion among friends?)

This was nice: a $14.5 billion energy bill that, according to the president, doesn't do a damn thing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but does give financial hoochie-koochies to the oil companies which they can stack on top of their record-breaking profits. Suh-weeet!

How about $2.2 trillion with a T in tax cuts for the rich---during wartime even! Or a pork-laden, $286 billion transportation bill. That's orgasmo-tastic!

And while we're at it, let's not forget Social Security privatization, which would toss at least another $1 trillion onto the pile.

But...funding for relief efforts to help victims of the worst natural disaster in our nation's 229-year history? Well...that's cause for grave concern by Republican "fiscal conservatives":

"We have to be there for the families and the communities, but we also have an obligation to the rest of the American people and to future generations," says Rep. Mike Pence (R-Indiana).

"We're going to have to put a real sharp pencil to the budget, sharper than we have ever had to do before," says Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Illinois).

"When figures start flowing up to $200 billion, I have concerns. $1 billion is a lot of money," says Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).

Clearly, "fiscal conservative" Republicans need our support more than ever in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They're suffering and no one seems to feel their pain. Please show you care and donate as much as you can by placing (non tax-deductible) donations into the ExxonMobil baseball cap in the lobby. God Bless You...and God Bless the Fiscally Conservative United States of America!

If you click on the article he provides links to all these facts. Snarky goodness.

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Embattled FEMA Director Mike Brown Resigns - Yahoo! News
Mr. Brown! Your sword, SIR!

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown said Monday he has resigned "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president," three days after losing his onsite command of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

"The focus has got to be on FEMA, what the people are trying to do down there," Brown told The Associated Press.

His decision was not a surprise. Brown was abruptly recalled to Washington on Friday, a clear vote of no confidence from his superiors at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. Brown had been roundly criticized for FEMA's bearish response to the hurricane, which has caused political problem for Bush and fellow Republicans.

"I'm turning in my resignation today," Brown said. "I think it's in the best interest of the agency and the best interest of the president to do that and get the media focused on the good things that are going on, instead of me."

Brown, who said he last talked to Bush five or six days ago, said the resignation was his idea. He spoke on Saturday to White House chief of staff Andy Card, who did not request his departure, according to Brown.

*wink* Yeah, I just bet it was your idea.

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The Daily Telegraph | Patients put down
From Australia comes this chilling story...this is the second time I have heard this, so I thought I 'd put it up there. They never mention the name of the hospital, but 45 bodies were found this morning at Memorial. So, maybe...

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

One New Orleans doctor told how she "prayed for God to have mercy on her soul" after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials.

One emergency official, William Forest McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana and the doctors spoke only on condition on anonymity.

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

"I didn't know if I was doing the right thing," the doctor said.

"But I did not have time. I had to make snap decisions, under the most appalling circumstances, and I did what I thought was right.

"I injected morphine into those patients who were dying and in agony.

"If the first dose was not enough, I gave a double dose.

"And at night I prayed to God to have mercy on my soul."

The doctor, who finally fled her hospital late last week in fear of being murdered by the armed looters, denied her actions were murder.

"This was not murder, this was compassion. They would have been dead within hours, if not days," she said.

"What we did was give comfort to the end. I had cancer patients who were in agony. In some cases the drugs may have speeded up the death process.

"We divided the hospital's patients into three categories: Those who were traumatised but medically fit enough to survive, those who needed urgent care, and the dying.

"People would find it impossible to understand the situation.

"I had to make life-or-death decisions in a split second.

"It came down to giving people the basic human right to die with dignity.

"There were patients with 'do not resuscitate' signs. Under normal circumstances some could have lasted several days. But when the power went out, we had nothing.

"Some of the very sick became distressed. We tried to make them as comfortable as possible.

"The pharmacy was under lockdown because gangs of armed looters were roaming around looking for their fix.

"You have to understand these people were going to die anyway."

Mr McQueen, a utility manager for the town of Abita Springs, half an hour north of New Orleans, told relatives that patients had been "put down", saying: "They injected them, but nurses stayed with them until they died."

Mr McQueen, who worked closely with emergency teams, added: "They had to make unbearable decisions."

I wonder which "local government officials" supposedly confirmed this? And if this is true, how come our media hasn't brought it up?

Anyway, it's a little flavor of how the rest of the world looks at us.

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He's Baaaack!:

For the fourth time- they keep pulling it down, he keeps putting it back up-

DVD of me saying "GO **** YOURSELF" to DICK CHENEY

The last time he put it up he had a tag line saying to "donate directly to me" here's my PayPal account, etc etc. I wrote him a note to tell him to pull that line- eBay doesn't approve of anything that they don't get a cut of. He wrote me back and said he would check into it, but he never pulled the address. Now I notice this new one doesn't have that line in it anymore.

To be continued...

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West Michigan Whitecaps -Whitecaps eliminated from playoffs
Summer is officially over.

SOUTH BEND, IN - West Michigan had plenty of offensive opportunities and stranded 12 runners on base, but fell 6-3 at South Bend as the Silver Hawks swept the Eastern Division Championship Series, two games to none.

South Bend, which won both halves in the Eastern Division, will face Wisconsin, the winner of both halves in the west, in the Midwest League Championship Series that begins Tuesday.

The Whitecaps left the bases loaded twice – in the first and seventh innings - yet did not score a run in the series until the seventh on Sunday. Chris Robinson came home from second on a bunt single by Brooks Colvin and a throwing error by pitcher Ryan Coffin, who looped the ball over first base and into right field. That run tied the game, 1-1.

But in the bottom of the seventh, pinch hitter Travis Gulick hit a sacrifice fly to right to drive in Wilkin Castillo and give the Silver Hawks the lead for good.

The run was charged to West Michigan starting pitcher Josh Rainwater, who threw 6.1 innings, allowed two runs on eight hits and took the loss.

South Bend put the game out of reach in the eighth by batting around and scoring four times on six hits for a 6-1 advantage.

Jeff Frazier gave West Michigan a final glimmer of hope with a one-out, two-run homer in the top of the ninth, but the next three Whitecaps were retired in order by closer Matt Elliot.

There's Always Next Year: The next Whitecaps game will be April 6, 2006. A complete Midwest League schedule will be announced in the coming weeks. Watch www.whitecaps-baseball.com for updates.

Thanks for a fun year, Whitecaps! April seems so far away...

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How Bush Blew It - Newsweek Hurricane Katrina Coverage - MSNBC.com
Newsweek slams Bush and his band of enablers. Good stuff.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.

Isolated from the world, and his yes-men afraid to talk to him. This does not bode well for the next three years.

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eBay: DVD of me saying "GO **** YOURSELF" to DICK CHENEY
This is the 3RD time this guy has had to list this! What will they find to complain about next?

Well apparently a lot of people don't want my video to ever see the light of day so it was deleted once again. I will once again attempt to repost this and I will keep cutting/pasting each time they delete it until I have complied with all their rules.

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Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan
This ought to scare the shit out of everyone.

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

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002. The strategy was outlined in more detail at the time in classified national security directives.

At a White House briefing that year, a spokesman said the United States would "respond with overwhelming force" to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, its forces or allies, and said "all options" would be available to the president.

The draft, dated March 15, would provide authoritative guidance for commanders to request presidential approval for using nuclear weapons, and represents the Pentagon's first attempt to revise procedures to reflect the Bush preemption doctrine. A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction.

Titled "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" and written under the direction of Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the draft document is unclassified and available on a Pentagon Web site. It is expected to be signed within a few weeks by Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of the Joint Staff, according to Navy Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a public affairs officer in Myers's office. Meanwhile, the draft is going through final coordination with the military services, the combatant commanders, Pentagon legal authorities and Rumsfeld's office, Cutler said in a written statement.

A "summary of changes" included in the draft identifies differences from the 1995 doctrine, and says the new document "revises the discussion of nuclear weapons use across the range of military operations."

The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations.

Another scenario for a possible nuclear preemptive strike is in case of an "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

That and other provisions in the document appear to refer to nuclear initiatives proposed by the administration that Congress has thus far declined to fully support.

George Bush with his finger on the nuclear button. Just imagine if this had been in play for Iraq. I have no doubts he would have used it.

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Firms with Bush ties snag Katrina deals - Yahoo! News
Death=dollars. For Bush's buddies anyway.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

Experts say it has been common practice in both Republican and Democratic administrations for policy makers to take lobbying jobs once they leave office, and many of the same companies seeking contracts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have already received billions of dollars for work in Iraq.

Halliburton alone has earned more than $9 billion. Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.

"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

Perhaps there should be a law....

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Rescuers collect dead, Cheney sounds upbeat - Yahoo! News
That's an actual headline on MyYahoo! right now. Well, gee, Dick, we're glad you're upbeat about the whole thing. Oh look, and here's George to bring up the "spirit of 9/11" a few more times. What a surprise.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Emergency workers collected the dead of New Orleans on Saturday and the official death toll rose slowly, boosting hopes Hurricane Katrina would claim far fewer lives than the many thousands once feared.

As police and soldiers started to remove the bodies -- many in homes marked with paint to identify their presence when floodwaters were high -- President George W. Bush invoked the spirit that united the nation after the September 11 attacks.

"Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it," he said on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the New York and Washington attacks that killed some 2,700 people.

The Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals raised the official hurricane death toll for the state to 154. In Mississippi, 211 people were confirmed dead. There was no updated official figure from Alabama, which also sustained considerable damage in the August 29 storm. The storm claimed seven lives in Florida.

Bush, who successfully rallied the nation after the September 11 attacks, has faced criticism for the federal government's performance -- described as slow and inadequate -- following the hurricane. The president was to travel to the region for a third time on Sunday, the anniversary of 9/11.

Bush's job approval ratings have hit all-time lows. A Newsweek poll published on Saturday found 52 percent of Americans did not trust him to make the correct decisions during either a foreign or domestic crisis, against 45 percent who did. The president's overall approval stood at 38 percent.

Presidential limbo. How low can he go?

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CNN.com - Judge supports CNN request to cover Katrina's toll - Sep 10, 2005
Activist judge alert!

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- At the request of CNN, a federal judge in Texas Friday night blocked emergency officials in New Orleans from preventing the media from covering the recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina.

Attorneys for the network argued that the ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on news gathering.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order against a "zero access" policy announced earlier Friday by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

A hearing was scheduled for Saturday morning to determine if the order should be made permanent.

In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let media view the bodies.

In an e-mail to CNN staff, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said the network filed the the lawsuit to "prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover" the hurricane victim recovery process.

"As seen most recently from war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, from tsunami-ravaged South Asia and from Hurricane Katrina's landfall along the Gulf," Walton wrote, "CNN has shown that it is capable of balancing vigorous reporting with respect for private concerns."

I didn't think they would be able get all the media out, anyway. Heck, Americablog sent a kid down there who got in, no problem, and is sending back all kinds of pictures. What are they going to do, start arresting journalists? That wouldn't look to good now, would it?

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It's All About eBay:

Where everyone is a star-

VIDEO WHERE I SHOUT "GO FU** YOURSELF" TO DICK CHENEY

This guy had his friend tape it and is now selling it on eBay. He also tells the story of what happened next (and, no, what he did was NOT illegal. Nice to know.)

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Bush's power to detain US enemy combatant upheld - Yahoo! News
The implications of this ruling are frightening. Basically, the government can hold you at any time for any reason and deny you due process. Kiss the Bill of Rights and the Constitution goodbye, you terrorist you.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush has the power to detain Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been held in a South Carolina military brig for more than three years as a suspected enemy combatant without any charges, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

"The exceedingly important question before us is whether the president of the United States possesses the authority to detain militarily a citizen of this country who is closely associated with al Qaeda," wrote appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig for the three-judge panel.

"We conclude that the president does possess such authority," wrote Luttig, a conservative whom the Bush administration has been considering for a possible Supreme Court nomination.

The ruling by the court based in Richmond, Virginia, was a major victory for the Bush administration, but the decision can be appealed to the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Padilla, a former Chicago gang member and convert to Islam, initially was suspected by U.S. officials of plotting with al Qaeda to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States.

On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport after returning from Pakistan. Bush then declared him an enemy combatant, and Padilla was placed in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina -- where he remains.

The appeals court reversed a decision by a federal judge in South Carolina who ruled in February that Bush had no authority to have Padilla held as an enemy combatant. The judge said Padilla must be released if he is not charged with a crime.

Luttig said that Bush had the power to detain Padilla, based on the joint resolution authorizing military force that Congress approved after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Who knows if this guy is really a bad-ass or not. It looks like he might be. BUT, the point is, the government has had three years to come up with something to charge him with, and they can't. So he sits. And will sit for a long, long time.

Let's not forget Luttig was one of the names being bandied about for Supreme Court. Something to think about.

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FEMA director pulled off Katrina relief - Yahoo! News
As that idiot announcer for the White Sox would say, "He gone!"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The director of Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, who has been fiercely criticized over the relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, will be pulled off relief operations in the area, two U.S. officials said on Friday.

They said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was bringing Brown back to Washington and putting Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard, in charge of operations on the ground.

But.. but.. but, I thought he was doing a "heck of a job"? Hmmm, was the Preznit WRONG about that?

Dude, try not to kill anyone on your way out of town...

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Tight Constraints on Pentagon's Freedom Walk
This is totally bizarre. Check out all the "freedom" on the "Freedom Walk".

Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

The march, sponsored by the Department of Defense, will wend its way from the Pentagon to the Mall along a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," said Allison Barber, deputy assistant secretary of defense.

The U.S. Park Police will have its entire Washington force of several hundred on duty and along the route, on foot, horseback and motorcycles and monitoring from above by helicopter. Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford.

The event, the America Supports You Freedom Walk, is billed as a memorial to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and a show of support for those serving in the military, topped off with a concert by country singer Clint Black, known for his pro-troops anthem, "Iraq and Roll." Organizers said they expect 3,000 to 10,000 participants.

Barber said that organizers would rather not have such stringent measures on their event but that police had requested them.

Pettiford said officers would patrol to keep interlopers out because the Pentagon restricted the event in its permit application. "That is what their permit called for, so we have those fences to keep the public out."

Once the National Park Service approves the permit, it is normal for police to do what they can to adhere to the organizers' requests. "It's a permitted event. That means [organizers] are allowed to say who is in and who's out," said Sgt. Scott Fear, a Park Police spokesman. He declined to say how many officers were in the Park Police, which had a Washington detail of about 400 two years ago.

What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest.
Park Police officials said security and safety were concerns, especially because Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will participate in some of the day's events. They said they have approved a permit for a small group of protesters that plans to stand along Independence Avenue.

Yeah, lots of "freedom" going on there. You have to pre-register, giving them your name, you have to walk on a "sterile" route behind a fence surrounded by a bunch of cops, and you will be arrested if you don't adhere to all their bullshit policies.

So much freedom! What a disgraceful joke.

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It's All About Me:

I put a word verification measure up for posting comments to try to stem the Blog Spam. If this doesn't work, I'm going to disable the comments- not many people comment anyway and I'm tired of the spam. I hope it works.

If not, I'll just rant and you won't be able to say anything! So there!

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Bush allows Katrina contractors to pay below prevailing wage - Sep. 8, 2005
George Bush continues to fuck over the little guy and the victims of Katrina. Get cheap labor from people who are desperate for jobs, and make his buddies even wealthier. What a surprise.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.

Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor's biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats.

"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities," Miller said.

"President Bush should immediately realize the colossal mistake he has made in signing this order and rescind it and ensure that America puts its people back to work in the wake of Katrina at wages that will get them and their families back on their feet," Miller said.

"I regret the president's decision," said Kennedy.

"One of the things the American people are very concerned about is shabby work and that certainly is true about the families whose houses are going to be rebuilt and buildings that are going to be restored," Kennedy said.

The Davis-Bacon law requires federal contractors to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. It applies to federally funded construction projects such as highways and bridges.

Bush's executive order suspends the requirements of the Davis-Bacon law for designated areas hit by the storm.

Mark my words. This will be a windfall for his buddies, and his buddies only, just like Iraq. Watch and see. The raid on the Federal Treasury continues.

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West Michigan Whitecaps -It's a sweep!
Caps win!

FORT WAYNE, IN - West Michigan prolonged Fort Wayne's playoff victory drought with a 7-2 victory that completed a 2-0 sweep of the first round series. The Whitecaps advance to the Eastern Division Championship Series and await the winner of the South Bend vs. Southwest Michigan series.

The Wizards have not won a playoff game since 2000 and have not won a playoff series since 1998. By pulling off the sweep, the Whitecaps avenge their only other post season meeting with Fort Wayne, which was a 2-0 first round sweep for the Wizards in 1997.

After the Whitecaps grabbed a 2-0 lead on RBI hits by Wilkin Ramirez and Luis Sabino in the top of the first, Fort Wayne scored their only runs of the series to tie the game in the bottom of the inning. Mike Baxter's two-out, two run double drove in the runs.

West Michigan starter Dallas Trahern settled down to throw six innings and allow six hits and record the win.

Nick McIntyre provided a go-ahead 2-run double in the top of the fifth inning as the Whitecaps put together four consecutive one-out hits for a three-run rally.

Brent Dlugach hit a two-run single to right in the eighth for the final margin of victory and a 7-2 lead.

P. J. Finigan, Ed Clelland and Kevin Whelan each threw a scoreless inning of relief for West Michigan.

Cesar Ramos, who beat the Whitecaps last month at Fifth Third Ballpark, allowed five runs on eight hits and took the loss for Fort Wayne.

The Next Opponent: The Whitecaps will face either South Bend or Southwest Michigan in the best-of-three Eastern Division Championship Series, which begins Saturday at Fifth Third Ballpark. Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. at Fifth Third Ballpark or by calling 1-800-CAPS-WIN.

It will be against South Bend, who won their series 2-0 also. Saturday night baseball!

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Democrats spurn Republican-backed Katrina probe - Yahoo! News
OMG they actually are growing a backbone...wow. Go Harry go.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic leaders pushing for an independent commission to investigate the government's response to Hurricane Katrina spurned on Thursday a plan by majority Republicans for a joint congressional inquiry.

House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, called the House-Senate investigation announced by Republican leaders on Wednesday a "sham" and said it would not produce an objective assessment of what went wrong in the hours and days following the storm.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada also said he would not participate in the Republican-led inquiry.

The government's initial response to the catastrophic storm that left hundreds of thousands homeless and thousands feared dead along the U.S. Gulf Coast has come under intense bipartisan criticism.

While President George W. Bush declared Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama disaster areas days before Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29 "to avert the threat of a catastrophe," residents of the region complained there was no federal help until days after the storm.

Pelosi said on CNN on Thursday that in meetings with Bush this week to discuss the response to Katrina the president asked her "'What didn't go right last week?"'

House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, both Republicans, announced what they said would be a bipartisan investigation at an event on Wednesday to which no Democrats were invited. With their plan, aides said Republicans would have the majority of members.

"The partisan proposal that Republican leaders outlined yesterday is completely unacceptable," Pelosi said. "House Democrats will not participate in a sham that is just the latest example of congressional Republicans being the foxes guarding the president's hen house."

Both Pelosi and Reid have called for an independent commission similar to the one that investigated intelligence failures before the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Saa-weet! Refuse to participate in this Republican farce. Matter of fact, there are a whole bunch of things they should refuse to participte in from here on out until this is sent to an independent investigation. Roberts hearings, anyone?

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From Irish TV:

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The Raw Story | Cheney told to 'go fuck yourself' in Gulfport, Mississippi
Ooops! Guess that guy didn't sign his loyalty oath!

Vice President Dick Cheney, in Gulfport, Mississippi on a tour of the Katrina hurricane zone, was told to "go fuck yourself" twice on live television, RAW STORY has learned.

During a discussion on hurricane relief efforts, an off camera protester shouts, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself."

The camera remains on Cheney while we hear scuffling in the background. (Uh oh. Somebody take up a collection to raise bail....) Cheney continues speaking.

CNN's reporter asks Cheney, "Are you getting a lot of that Mr. Vice President?"

Cheney replies, "First time I've heard it., Must be a friend of John..., er, ah - never mind."

Laughter ensues from the VP and reporters. Directly aftward, Cheney continues an ongoing monologue on what to do about hurricane debris: "But it's a question about what you do with the debris in terms of your toxic waste problem you've got to worry about in terms of where you're going to put it..."

A big shout-out to Crooks and Liars for hosting video of all this stuff. I've seen lots of things that I normally would have missed because I can't stand to watch the babble coming from the "infotainment" folks.

The guy was actually polite about it. He said it in the "have a nice day" tone of voice.

Made my day.

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High winter energy costs expected: Bodman - Yahoo! News
This scares me to death. It might freeze me to death also.

WASHINGTON, Sept 8 - The U.S. economy will face a tough winter due to high energy prices caused partly by a disruption in oil and natural gas supplies from Hurricane Katrina, U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman warned Thursday.

"There is no doubt that this is going to be a very tough winter season for the American economy (and) for American homeowners," Bodman said in an interview on the Fox news channel.

The Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday Americans who warm their homes with natural gas could see their fuel costs jump by as much as 71 percent this winter in some parts of the country.

Residential heating bills for heating oil will increase by 31 percent, and electricity users will see their costs rise by 17 percent, the Energy Department's analytical arm said in its latest monthly energy forecast.

Separately, Bodman said he expected the drop in crude oil prices from last week's record of over $70 a barrel to be passed on to consumers in the form of lower gasoline costs.

"We would expect that over time that would be reflected at the pump," he said.

The national price for regular unleaded gasoline jumped 46 cents over the past week to hit a record high of $3.07 a gallon on Tuesday, according to the EIA.

71 %?!!!??? I'm in big trouble in that actually happens.

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WZZM 13 Grand Rapids - Whitecaps take control in first round series
Go Caps!

COMSTOCK PARK, MI - Jair Jurrjens pitched six innings and combined with two Whitecaps relievers in a playoff-opening shutout of Fort Wayne, 4-0.

West Michigan leads the best-of-three first round series, 1-0.
Jurrjens walked three but struck out six and allowed all three Wizards hits. He and Kevin Ardoin, who pitched the seventh and eighth innings, combined to retire 14 batters in a row.

19 of the last 21 Fort Wayne hitters in the game were set down by the 'Caps. Mike Ekstrom, who at one point this season was 13-3 but struggled down the stretch, continued to slump and took the loss. Five consecutive Whitecaps reached base against Ekstrom with one out in the first inning.

Wilkin Ramirez put the Whitecaps on the board with a two-run double. Two batters later, Brent Dlugach came up with an RBI single for a 3-0 lead.

The score remained the same until the sixth inning, when Luis Sabino pulled a two-out, solo home run down the right field line for a 4-0 advantage.

One Out of Two: The Whitecaps need one win in the next two days at Fort Wayne to advance to the Eastern Division Championship Series.

Sure would like to see more baseball this year at 5th3rd.

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Schwarzenegger to veto gay marriage bill - Yahoo! News
BOOOOOOOOoooooo.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Wednesday he will veto a bill to allow gay marriage in the state and said the issue should be decided by the courts or by voters directly but not by the Democrat-controlled legislature.

A veto had been widely expected after California's Assembly on Tuesday endorsed gay marriage, the first time a state legislature had taken such a step. California's Senate passed the bill last week.

Schwarzenegger's press secretary, Margita Thompson, said the governor "believes that gay couples are entitled to full protection under the law and should not be discriminated against based upon their relationship."

But since California voters approved a ballot measure five years ago defining marriage as between a man and a woman, the question of gay marriage should be put to voters again in a referendum or decided by courts, she said.

"We cannot have a system where the people vote and the legislature derails that vote," Thompson said.

We also cannot have a system where the majority denies legal rights to a minority.

"If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution."- Abraham Lincoln.

OK, so you might say marriage is not a clearly written constitutional right. BUT, when you feel you have to write admendments to deny only certain people that legal protection, it clearly BECOMES a right at that point.

Bite me, Arnie.

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Guess Who's Running for President:
From my e-mail bag. I think I've heard from everyone now except Ted. I took Kerry off in a fissy fit awhile ago, so I'm not sure if he threw something out here or not.

Hillary is speaking out about the need to take action in the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Appearing on four morning television shows today and talking to reporters, she spoke of meeting with hurricane victims in Houston:

"At every turn I encountered our fellow citizens with desperate questions and few answers," she said. "Certainly there was nobody in charge at the federal government, and there was nobody willing to take responsibility to work with state and local officials."

Hillary has introduced legislation to restore FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to Cabinet-level, independent status, as it was in the Clinton Administration. "The bureaucracy created by moving FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security is clearly not working..." she said

For a copy of Hillary's complete statement, please visit www.hillaryclinton.com.

"FEMA was the lead agency during the Clinton Administration. It was in charge. ...FEMA took on the role of helping to prepare localities and states to be in a position to respond. ...That philosophy...was rejected by this administration. ...[FEMA] was basically taken apart and denied funding."

Hillary also called for an independent Katrina Commission to provide a comprehensive evaluation of what could have been and should have been done to avoid the extraordinary damage, loss of life and inadequate relief problems that have contributed to the suffering of so many thousands of Americans.

"This was a massive disaster but there were certainly enough warnings and enough people who had given warnings to the government before. ...I want an independent commission to investigate because I don't believe it's appropriate for this government to investigate itself, and because I think we should focus on recovery efforts. ...I believe we owe the people better. ...I think we owe the American people answers."

Asked this morning on the Today Show where the money to rebuild should come from, Hillary said:

"It comes from the first instance in not making those tax cuts for rich people like us permanent. You know, it means let's get back to shared sacrifice. Let's take care of each other. Let's plan for the future. Let's do what is necessary to put Americans first again."

Playing politics indeed. That is what they do. They are politicians, afterall. It would be like telling a doctor, "Now is not the time for medicine!" Or telling a ballplayer, "Now is not the time for a good play!"

I mean, really, who are we kidding here?

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Democrats Assail Administration on Katrina Approach; Bush Seeks as Much as $50 Billion for Recovery DAVID ESPO Associated Press - from TBO.com
Now keep it up.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress' top two Democrats furiously criticized the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday, with Sen. Harry Reid demanding to know whether President Bush's Texas vacation impeded relief efforts and Rep. Nancy Pelosi assailing the chief executive as "oblivious, in denial" about the difficulties.

GOP congressional leaders met privately to plan their next step, possibly including an unusual joint House-Senate committee to investigate what went wrong in the government's response and what can be fixed. Establishment of a joint panel would presumably eliminate overlapping investigations that might otherwise spring up as individual committees looked into the natural disaster and its aftermath. (From what I've read, Democrats were not even told about this meeting. This is all the GOP's ballgame.)

In a letter to the Senate's Homeland Security Committee chairwoman, Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, pressed for a wide-ranging investigation and answers to several questions, including: "How much time did the president spend dealing with this emerging crisis while he was on vacation? Did the fact that he was outside of Washington, D.C., have any effect on the federal government's response?"

At a news conference, Pelosi, D-Calif., said Bush's choice for head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency had "absolutely no credentials."

She related that she had urged Bush at the White House on Tuesday to fire Michael Brown.

"He said 'Why would I do that?'" Pelosi said.

"'I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?'"

"Oblivious, in denial, dangerous," she added.

Even as they called for investigations of the government's response, several Democratic senators said it was already clear that Brown, the FEMA director, should go.

Hillary Rodham Clinton bristled when asked about Republican accusations that she was trying to capitalize on a natural disaster to help her political career.

She said on NBC's "Today," "Every time anyone raises any kind of legitimate criticism and asks questions, they're attacked."

Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D, said in a telephone call with reporters Wednesday that he and other members of the Senate may try to push legislation that would separate FEMA from the Homeland Security Department. He said they may try to add the language to a spending bill that would fund the Commerce and Justice Departments.

Reid said in his letter that Collins' panel should pursue answers to several questions. Among them, why Bush and administration officials said no one anticipated the breach of the levees despite public studies and warnings, whether budget cuts thwarted the Army Corps of Engineers and whether enough troops were dispatched promptly.

I guess Hillary put on a good show this morning. Go get 'em kids. We can't afford three more years of this shit.

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DCCC.org: Demand New Leadership at FEMA
Yippee, another petition. Go sign.

Rumor has it Pelosi and Reid both came out firing today. When the story hits the newswires I'll blog it.

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DHS budget criticized for shortchanging first responders - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com
Here's my answer for Mr. DeLay.

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s proposed homeland security budget shortchanges the nation’s first line of defense against terrorism and either cuts back or eliminates several other vital security programs, members of a Senate panel said Monday.

The DHS budget includes “a stunning 30 percent cut, government-wide, for first responders that is the latest evidence of shortchanging the homeland side of the war against terrorism,” warned former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended the funding proposals, saying the administration took a hard look at the realities of the times and made tough choices “by the balancing of the fiscal and security environment,” Ridge said.

Ridge also deflected criticism of the administration’s budget by promising that his agency will make it a priority to “break the logjam” that is keeping $8 billion to $9 billion allocated by Congress from reaching state and local firefighters, police and medical personnel.

Ridge made the promises during congressional testimony in which he defended the administration’s spending decisions as outlined in the president’s proposed $40.2 billion budget for DHS for fiscal year 2005. Ridge’s testimony Monday before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is the first of six appearances he’ll make in the next two weeks before various House and Senate panels.

The DHS budget drew bipartisan criticism Monday for various programs it cut completely — such as funding for SafeComm, a grant program to help ensure that first responder communications are interoperable — to those it scaled back dramatically, such as the $1.6 billion (30 percent) cut in key grant programs to first responders.

Your move, scum-boy.

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CNN.com - House cancels hearings on Katrina response - Sep 7, 2005
!!!!!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House majority leader late Tuesday tried to deflect criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina by saying "the emergency response system was set up to work from the bottom up," then announced a short time later that House hearings examining that response had been canceled.

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said House Republican leaders instead want a joint House-Senate panel set up to conduct a "congressional review" of the issue.

Tempers flared Tuesday during a contentious closed-door meeting between House members and Cabinet secretaries in charge of directing Katrina relief efforts. A Republican representative stood up and said, "All of you deserve failing grades. The response was a disaster," CNN was told by lawmakers emerging from the meeting.

But DeLay countered that assessment later in a news conference by saying that the onus for responding to emergencies fell to local officials.

"It's the local officials trying to handle the problem. When they can't handle the problem, they go to the state, and the state does what they can to, and if they need assistance from FEMA and the federal government they ask for it and it's delivered," DeLay said.

He added that Alabama and Mississippi did a much better job of responding quickly than Louisiana. Alabama and Mississippi have Republican governors.

Cockroach. Tom DeLay is a cockroach. It's just that simple.

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Salt Lake Tribune - Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA
In a long list of continuous fuck-ups, this one has to rate near the top of the "disgusting" pile. You think this isn't about PR and controlling spin? You think this isn't about politics? Read on-

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Federal officials are unapologetic. (Really? There's a shock.)

"I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," said FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak.

The firefighters - or at least the fire chiefs who assigned them to come to Atlanta - knew what the assignment would be, Hudak said.

"The initial call to action very specifically says we're looking for two-person fire teams to do community relations," she said. "So if there is a breakdown [in communication], it was likely in their own departments."

So, at a time when New Orleans was burning, FEMA was concerned with community relations, handing out a phone number to people that most likely didn't have access to a phone.

Unreal.

"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."

The firefighter, who has encouraged his superiors back home not to send any more volunteers for now, declined to give his name because FEMA has warned them not to talk to reporters.

Roy Fire Chief Jon Ritchie said his crews would be a "little frustrated" if they were assigned to hand out phone numbers at an evacuee center in Texas rather than find and treat victims of the disaster.

Also of concern to some of the firefighters is the cost borne by their municipalities in the wake of their absence. Cities are picking up the tab to fill the firefighters' vacancies while they work 30 days for the federal government.

"There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter said. "They [the hurricane victims] are screaming for help and this day [of FEMA training] was a waste."

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

I honestly don't know what to say anymore. This shit is beyond belief.

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Reuters AlertNet - U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
Control the images, control the propaganda. So much for the "free press".

NEW ORLEANS, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims.

An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that "the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect."

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry.

The Bush administration also has prevented the news media from photographing flag-draped caskets of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, which has sparked criticism that the government is trying to block images that put the war in a bad light.

The White House is under fire for its handling of the relief effort, which many officials have charged was slow and bureaucratic, contributing to the death and mayhem in New Orleans after the storm struck on Aug. 29.

We will have no witnesses, either. Forcing everyone to leave- although I think enough video has already gotten out. Apparently Oprah had a bunch of shots of the dead on her show yesterday. Not only can this administration not handle a catastrophe, they can't handle the spin afterwards.

NEW ORLEANS - To the estimated 10,000 residents still believed to be holed up in this ruined city, the mayor had a blunt new warning: Get out now — or risk being taken out by force.

As floodwaters began to slowly recede with the city's first pumps returning to operation, Mayor C. Ray Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to leave.

Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said that forced removal of citizens had not yet begun. "That's an absolute last resort," he said.

Nagin's order targets those still in the city unless they have been designated as helping with the relief effort. Repeated calls to Nagin's spokeswoman, Tami Frazier, seeking comment were not returned.

The move — which supersedes an earlier, milder order to evacuate made before Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore Aug. 29 — comes after rescuers scouring New Orleans found hundreds of people willing to defy repeated urgings to get out.

A milder order to evacuate? I don't know there were degrees of orders.

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Bob Denver, TV's Gilligan, Dead at 70 - Yahoo! News
Awww, man, all this and now Gilligan, too?

LOS ANGELES - Bob Denver, whose portrayal of goofy castaway Gilligan on the 1960s TV show "Gilligan's Island" made him an iconic figure to generations of TV viewers, has died. He was 70.

He died Friday at Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital in North Carolina of complications from treatment he was receiving for cancer, his agent, Mike Eisenstadt, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

I used to watch Gilligan's Island RELIGIOUSLY every day after school. It's probably the reason why I'm so screwed up.

Sorry, don't remember Maynard G. Krebs. That truly was before my time.

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Bush Says He'll Find Out What Went Wrong - Yahoo! News
BREAKING NEWS: Richard Nixon to investigate Watergate break-in. Film at 11.

WASHINGTON - Buffeted by criticism over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said Tuesday he will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why — in part to be sure the country could withstand more storms or attack.

OBVIOUSLY NOT, George. But I bet you will say that we can.

Bush also announced he is sending Vice President Dick Cheney to the Gulf Coast region on Thursday to help determine whether the government is doing all that it can.

No, I bet that Unca Dick is on the way to make sure that Halliburton will be "doing all that it can".

"What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong," Bush said. "We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack or another major storm."

The thought of which makes me ill at this point. I need a gun to protect myself.

But Bush said now is not the time to point fingers and he did not respond to calls for a commission to investigate the response.

"One of the things people want us to do here is play the blame game," he said. "We got to solve problems. There will be ample time to figure out what went right and what went wrong."

Well, then, maybe you boys might want to stop running around saying, "The Mayor did it! The Govenor did it! Whaaaaah, not our fault!"

How did I know that I would be pissed off by the "official response"? Oh yeah, I've been awake. Silly me.

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Sad Story of Boy and His Dog Grips Nation - Yahoo! News
I haven't blogged much about pets because it's heart-wrenching for me. I know that I would not be able to leave my cats behind. I would rather die with them. Outside of my parents, they are my family.

NEW ORLEANS - Among the thousands of crushing moments from last week's deadly hurricane, one image brought the anguish home to many: a tearful little boy torn from his dog while being shuttled to safety.

It tugged at the heartstrings, prompting an outpouring from around the country of people on the hunt for both the boy and his dog Snowball in hopes of a reunion.

They've been scouring shelters, posting notes on the Internet and making phone calls to track them down. One woman set up a Web site to help people pair up pets with their owners. Another set up a reward to encourage someone to come forward with information on Snowball's or the boy's whereabouts.

"Everyone wants to know about Snowball," said Laura Maloney, executive director of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The boy was among the thousands sheltered at the Superdome after the hurricane. But when he went to board a bus to be evacuated to Houston, a police officer took the dog away. The boy cried out — "Snowball! Snowball!" — then vomited in distress. The confrontation was first reported by The Associated Press. Authorities say they don't know where the boy or his family ended up.

It was almost too much for Jean Jones to bear.

The 56-year-old woman from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., runs puppymillrescue.com and launched another site, katrinafoundpets.com, to help pair Snowball and other lost pets with their owners. She also started a reward fund — which hit $1,775 as of Monday — hoping money might persuade people to help out.

Billie Sue Bruce, a 65-year-old retired teacher in Jonesville, Va., was the first to donate, giving $500. "The child has been through so much already," she said. "Then to just add to this emotional state is unforgivable."

Late Monday, there was a ray of hope. The United Animal Nations said Snowball was safe, citing news from the state veterinarian's office. However, the information could not be immediately verified. To complicate matters further, the group called Snowball a terrier mix, while others consider the dog a bichon frise.

If the boy and his dog are indeed safe, they have beaten long odds.

Many of the animals — dogs, cats, ferrets and birds — that police collected at the Superdome were herded into a stairwell until the human evacuation was complete. Of the 50 animals rescued from the Superdome on Sunday, not all of them survived.

In Texas, refugees unable to care for their dogs and cats are handing them over to animal shelters already crowded with animals evacuated before the hurricane.

Here's hoping the dog will be found, and the kid will be found, and they will be reunited.

I wish I had more money to give- it would go towards a pet rescue if I did.

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CNN.com - Clinton: Government 'failed' people - Sep 5, 2005
The Big Dog turns! Welcome back, Bill. 'bout time.

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton on Monday said the government "failed" the thousands of people who lived in coastal communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and said a federal investigation was warranted in due time.

"Our government failed those people in the beginning, and I take it now there is no dispute about it," Clinton told CNN. "One hundred percent of the people recognize that -- that it was a failure." (See interview -- 2:32 )

He and former President George H. W. Bush have launched the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund to help raise money for those left homeless by the storm.

Clinton is just the latest in a long line of critics who have blasted the federal government for not moving fast enough to help people in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, which slammed into the Gulf Coast one week ago as a Category 4 hurricane.

Meanwhile, Mommy and Daddy continued to defend their fuck-up, frat boy idiot son. Babs even suggested that some of these folks are "better off".

The elder Bush echoed Clinton's sentiment, telling CNN's Larry King that he is "not satisfied" with the handling of the hurricane's aftermath.

Nonetheless, he defended his son's performance.

"What can he do? He can just go out and do what he's doing today, showing that the federal government's involved, has been involved, will continue to be involved ... He cannot listen to every critic from the editorial page of The New York Times," the elder Bush said.

No, but he can familiarize himself with the National Response Plan, since he ran a WHOLE FUCKING CAMPAIGN based on national security!

Anyway, here's Babs on the human plight. Yeah, I'm sure Texas will be a MUCH better place for these people...

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: "Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."

Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Yes, it's a wonderful thing to lose your home and possessions and then go to a state that has severely cut it's funding for the disadvantaged. Just beautiful.

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Attention Blog Spammers!:

Your comments will be deleted, so don't even bother. That is all.

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Bush to Nominate Roberts As Chief Justice - Yahoo! News
Take that, Clarence.

WASHINGTON - Moving swiftly, President Bush will nominate John Roberts to succeed William H. Rehnquist as chief justice, a senior administration source said Monday.

The president was to make the announcement in the Oval Office before leaving for another trip to the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast.

Bush met with Roberts at the White House on Sunday evening for about a half an hour and then offered him the top position at the Supreme Court on Monday morning, the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Bush had not announced his selection.

Yes, this he can move swiftly on. Interesting timing, 8AM on a holiday morning. Rehnquist isn't even cold yet.

Priorities in full view.

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WZZM 13 Grand Rapids - Michigan Prepares for Hurricane Evacuees
"My Governor Rocks- Pt.2"

Governor Jennifer Granholm toured Fort Custer in Augusta, Michigan Sunday. She got a close up look at a base that was originally built to train soldiers in World War One, which held German prisoners of war during World War Two, ( I didn't know we housed German POW's here- ed.) and is now being put to a very different use.

The barracks of Fort Custer will become a temporary home for hundreds of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina.

Gov. Granholm says, “Michigan is going to welcome these victims, these evacuees, with open arms and show them a bit of northern hospitality."

Why are they headed to Michigan? Major General Thomas Cutler of the Michigan National Guard explains that Kellogg Air National Guard Base and Fort Custer make an excellent combination because, “We could work the transportation issue very easily to get them here. And we have built in housing, built in logistical support, and a great community as well."

Once the evacuees arrive at Fort Custer, they'll get bags of donated necessities… everything from towels to toiletries.

Governor Granholm explains, “They'll get an identification card with a photo so that they've got something that identifies them and that they're able to use."

The evacuees will stay in barracks scattered around Fort Custer. The Governor says, “We've got over 800 of these kinds of beds available. We want to make sure we separate men from women. But, if they're families we want to make sure we give them preference for a private room."

Cooks are already preparing food for when their guests arrive. The evacuees will even have internet access so they can try to contact or locate friends and family.

There have been a lot of wonderful stories about the people of Grand Rapids pitching in to help out also. We might be wingnuts, but we are nice wingnuts.

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White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage - New York Times
Ahhhh, THIS they have a plan for. Political damage? Call out the experts! (Rove) Storm damage? Eh, not so much.

Fucking bastards.

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

It orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region, leading up to an extraordinary return visit by Mr. Bush planned for Monday, directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.

The effort is being directed by Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and his communications director, Dan Bartlett. It began late last week after Congressional Republicans called White House officials to register alarm about what they saw as a feeble response by Mr. Bush to the hurricane, according to Republican Congressional aides.

As a result, Americans watching television coverage of the disaster this weekend began to see, amid the destruction and suffering, some of the most prominent members of the administration - Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense; and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state - touring storm-damaged communities.

One Republican with knowledge of the effort said that Mr. Rove had told administration officials not to respond to Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the hurricane in the belief that the president was in a weak moment and that the administration should not appear to be seen now as being blatantly political. As with others in the party, this Republican would discuss the deliberations only on condition of anonymity because of keen White House sensitivity about how the administration and its strategy would be perceived.

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

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

That line of argument was echoed throughout the day, in harsher language, by Republicans reflecting the White House line.

In interviews, these Republicans said that the normally nimble White House political operation had fallen short in part because the president and his aides were scattered outside Washington on vacation, leaving no one obviously in charge at a time of great disruption. Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush were in Texas, while Vice President Dick Cheney was at his Wyoming ranch.

These officials said that Mr. Bush and his political aides rapidly changed course in what they acknowledged was a belated realization of the situation's political ramifications. As is common when this White House confronts a serious problem, management was quickly taken over by Mr. Rove and a group of associates including Mr. Bartlett. Neither man responded to requests for comment.

So, they only acted when they realized the POLITICAL ramifications. Never mind that Americans were dying- they didn't care about that.

Now they are going to bring out the blatant lies, and deny their responsibilities. Will the media call them on their bullshit this time? Will people like Landrieu stand up for the officials in her state? Interesting that they are not attacking, say, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, isn't it? Watch. The only people who will be blamed will be Democrats.

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Gore accompanies about 140 arrivals from New Orleans but declines to take credit
Look here! Real presidential material!

They saw nature's unmatched fury up close.

Now they would see unbridled human compassion.

About 140 people - mostly elderly and infirm - arrived Saturday at McGhee Tyson Airport on a chartered mercy flight from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, welcomed to East Tennessee by a bright sun and a host of medical professionals straining at the reins to help their fellow human beings without regard to whether they were on the clock.

The displaced hurricane victims came to Tennessee on a hastily arranged flight, accompanied by doctors and carrying whatever they had in boxes, bags or, in one case, an old suitcase tied up with rope.

Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be "politicized."

Sorry, Al, I'm going to give you some credit here. What I would give to have you as my President...

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AMERICAblog: The White House totally screwed up and their only strategy is to blame everyone else

Very nice writing here. I'm stealing the whole thing.

The Washington Post has two major front page articles today, which, when intertwined reveal just how completely inept, incompetent, ruthless and despicable George Bush and his administration are.

In the first piece, "Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting: White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials," we learn that instead of solving problems, the sociopaths at the Bush White House are now smearing state and local officials in Louisiana. They are really almost unbelievable. Using their bully pulpit not to help, but to shift blame:

Bush, who has been criticized, even by supporters, for the delayed response to the disaster, used his weekly radio address to put responsibility for the failure on lower levels of government. The magnitude of the crisis "has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," he said. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable."

The second article, which John highlighted in his post below, is a must read. It explains why the White House is smearing and blaming (basically the only skills the Bush people have.) They totally screwed up and this time it's documented. "Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top" reveals just how incompetent and inept they are:

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.

They should add the fact that the President stayed on vacation and was traveling around to California and Arizona for political events while the storm was killing people. But, what makes this practically criminal is that the Bush Administration KNEW what could happen if a major hurricane struck New Orleans:

Indeed, the warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.

And, FEMA itself says it's their job to protect us from these kinds of events.

So they were unprepared for their first homeland security test. Remember, the Department of Homeland Security is a Bush creation. They built and staffed it. They own it. But think about this. That little White House Brain Trust of Bush, Cheney, Rove and Bartlett -- who screwed over hundreds of thousands of Americans citizens last week and allowed thousands of their constituents to die -- put their heads together and their strategy is to blame the state and local folks.

George Bush is not up to the job of being President. He cannot keep Americans safe. Anyone who voted for him last November because of national security was duped. In fact, they are much less safe. A lot of Americans are dying because he is the President. Before last week, they were dying in Iraq. Now, they are dying at home.

Bush is not worthy of leading our nation.

Amen. Of course, some of us have been saying that for quite some time now.

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Chief Justice Rehnquist Dies of Cancer - Yahoo! News
Fuck.

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who oversaw the high court's conservative shift and presided over the impeachment trial of President Clinton, died Saturday evening. He was 80 years old and had spent 33 years on the Supreme Court.

Rehnquist's death opens a rare second vacancy on the nation's highest court and gives President Bush, whose election Rehnquist helped decide, an opportunity shape the makeup of the court for years to come.

"The Chief Justice battled thyroid cancer since being diagnosed last October and continued to perform his duties on the court until a precipitous decline in his health the last couple of days," court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in announcing his death.

Rehnquist was surrounded by his three children when he died at his home in suburban Arlington, Va. His wife died in 1991.

Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice in 1971 by President Nixon and took his seat on Jan. 7, 1972. He was elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986.

The death leaves Bush with his second court opening within four months and sets up what's expected to be an even more bruising Senate confirmation battle than that of John Roberts.

I am beginning to think that I died and went to Liberal Hell.

Liberal Hell is a place where you are actually sad that Bill Rehnquist is off the Supreme Court.

*sigh*

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Landrieu Implores President to "Relieve Unmitigated Suffering;" End FEMA's "Abject Failures"
Faked...a photo-op...right in front of a US Senator. Man.

"Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency. 24 hours later, the President has yet to answer my call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA, now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at hand.

"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast -- black and white, rich and poor, young and old -- deserve far better from their national government.

"Mr. President, I'm imploring you once again to get a cabinet-level official stood up as soon as possible to get this entire operation moving forward regionwide with all the resources -- military and otherwise -- necessary to relieve the unmitigated suffering and economic damage that is unfolding."

Today's aerial tour of the 17th Street levee will be featured tomorrow on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Later, Sen. Landrieu will also appear on CBS's 60 Minutes.

Wow. Just wow. If the Democrats can't run with this one- I honestly don't know what to say.

60 Minutes- do your job. And keep doing it, because people are on vacation this weekend. I better see some action on Tuesday when all these clowns are back to work in Washington.

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AMERICAblog: BREAKING: Bush visit to New Orleans halts food delivery
And the hits keep comin'...

Jesus Christ.

Whoever halted the food delivery should be fired and brought up on charges of criminal negligence. We need to know who ordered the air traffic stopped, did they know they were stopping the food deliveries, who else knew the food deliveries were being stopped, did anyone object to or know about them being stopped, if so who objected and to whom did they object and what response did they get?

This isn't just a "sad" story, this is criminally negligent. Someone had to affirmatively tell that food to stop. We need to know who, and we need to know if anyone associated with the White House or Secret Service or any other government official knew about this.

From the Times-Picayune (the story was on a breaking news page, it's now moved off, so I'm taking down the link, but it's for real, I copied it off the newspaper's web site)

Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

Thanks to John Aravosis for this one.

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United States of Shame - New York Times
The knives are out everywhere, Georgie-boy...

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. "You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, "but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen." Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled "can do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have known?" excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

Scathing and to the point. WTG Maureen. Go read the rest of this. I'd paste the whole damn thing but I guess the NY Times is a bit twitchy about copyright violations.

There is a scene in the movie "Aliens" that my mind keeps flashing back to- my mind does wacky shit like that- on every story that has to do with the colossal fuck-up that is this presidency. When Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) finds out that Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) purposely sent the colonists to the alien spaceship to infect them, she grabs Burke and throws him up against the wall-

"These people are DEAD, Burke."

"You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage!"

I think of her throwing Bush up against the wall, and screaming, "These people are DEAD, Bush!"

I'm weird like that. Where is Ripley when we need her?

We all know what happened to Burke. Movie justice took care of him. Will we be able to say the same of Bush? Stay tuned.

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American Red Cross-
Disaster FAQs -Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Interesting little tidbit here-

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

The Red Cross shares the nationÂ’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.

The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access.

The original plan was to evacuate all the residents of New Orleans to safe places outside the city. With the hurricane bearing down, the city government decided to open a shelter of last resort in the Superdome downtown. We applaud this decision and believe it saved a significant number of lives.

As the remaining people are evacuated from New Orleans, the most appropriate role for the Red Cross is to provide a safe place for people to stay and to see that their emergency needs are met. We are fully staffed and equipped to handle these individuals once they are evacuated.

"If we give people food and water- they won't leave!" Well. I suppose that is true. But then we are back to the original problem, aren't we? Some people don't have the MEANS or the STRENGTH to leave!

Your government in action. Starvation and dehydration as a motivational tool.

My God.

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From the "My Governor Rocks" Dept.:

LANSING – Governor Jennifer M. Granholm today commended Marathon Oil Corporation for reducing the price of regular unleaded gas at their Speedway service stations in Michigan to $2.99 per gallon. Marathon is the largest supplier of gasoline in the state.

This morning, Granholm called on Gary Heminger, executive vice president of Marathon Oil Corporation, to reduce the price of gas for Michigan customers.

“Marathon Oil Corporation today has demonstrated its corporate responsibility in lowering the price of gas and we not only appreciate their effort, but call on other oil companies and service stations to follow their lead,” Granholm said.

The Governor’s energy emergency declaration earlier this week allowed for increased supplies of gas in Michigan, which also contributed to Marathon’s ability to lower prices today.

That's a .50 a gallon decrease at my local station. I wonder if she threatened them with investigation. She also did this-

LANSING – In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and a summer of astronomical increases in the price of gasoline, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm and four other governors today called on President George W. Bush to act decisively in preventing oil companies from raking in profits at the expense of American consumers during this time of crisis.

“As the citizens of our nation band together to assist those in need, oil companies should be our partners as the nation tries to recover, not profit at the expense of the nation,” Granholm and the governors wrote in a letter to the president. “We urge you to move swiftly to cap corporate oil profits and strictly prosecute any violation of federal anti-trust laws – and take all other possible actions to protect Americans against profiteering.”

From April to June, Exxon Mobil’s net income rose 32 percent to $7.64 billion dollars, and Royal Dutch Shell announced a 34 percent increase in second quarter profits alone. The governors noted that before Hurricane Katrina interrupted the nation’s oil supply, consumers were paying too much for gasoline. With the storms impact, the governors fear corporate profits will continue to rise along with the price per gallon of motor fuel.

In addition to her request of the President, Governor Granholm has taken additional action here at home to protect consumers in Michigan from gouging at the pump. She recently put additional gas station inspectors on the street to keep a watchful eye on accuracy and quality issues at the pump. She issued executive orders relieving trucking restrictions on the transport of fuel to ensure that gas can be transported to high-need areas across the state, as necessary. The Governor is also forwarding hundreds of complaints of gas gouging to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which has jurisdiction over gouging investigations.

I'm sure the request to the President will fall on deaf ears, but- hey- good try Jennifer. Nice to see some leadership that actually helps people.

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Gay Rights Advocates Cheer Historic Vote - Yahoo! News
Uh oh! Look who snuck in the back door (no puns intended or implied) while y'all were pre-occupied!

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California's Senate has voted to allow gay marriage, making it the first legislative body in the nation to back the idea and setting off a frantic scramble for votes in the Assembly.

The 21-15 vote Thursday handed gay rights advocates in the country's most populous state a historic victory. Massachusetts issued marriage licenses to gays and lesbians only after court rulings.

"We are so very close," said Assemblyman Mark Leno, a Democrat who wrote the bill. "It would be very disappointing for this body not to be able to stand up for civil rights."

Leno said he planned to bring up the bill Tuesday and predicted that the Senate vote would help sway his undecided colleagues. In June, the Assembly rejected his bill by four votes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office had no comment Thursday on how the governor would respond if the bill reached his desk, spokeswoman Margita Thompson said.

Heh heh.

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It's All About Trent Lott:

George just said he looks forward to "sitting on the porch of Trent Lott's new house."

OMG.

Priorities in full view here.

CNN IMMEDIATELY skewered him- saying "this is just another photo-op".

Holy shit. Amazing.

Then CNN took a call from the now famous Convention Center, where a lady quietly informed them of the rising death toll. Back to reality.

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Daily Kos: LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT...
There is so much to blog on this I can't even see straight...but I thought this was a good one.

Just in case you missed the amazing performance of the Republican leadership yesterday...

President George W. Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." Well, no one except the entire world and even Mr. Bill.

-

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue, but not before she played tennis and yukked it up at Spamalot.

-

The Viceroy in charge of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff said "We're much better prepared than we've ever been." I'm not sure if that was before or after he reminded us that September is National Preparedness Month, so be sure to stock up on duct tape.

-

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown leapt into action, mustering all the emergency disaster management skills he learned as a lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department (from which he was fired). His money quote: "Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today."

-

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert said, eh, maybe we should just forget all about rebuilding New Orleans. Because it might cost money and stuff.

-

The Pentagon, headed by Donald Rumsfeld, reassured America that, yes, the Country music hoedown with Clint Black on September 11th is still on, pard'ner! And maybe we'll even break the record for the longest line dance.

-

The head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, sent out an email stressing that now---for God's sake, people---NOW is the time when we must repeal that which is causing our country to go down the tubes: the estate tax.

-

And Vice President Dick Cheney was still on vacation.

-

Lookie lookie, Planet Earth, at the leadership of the United States of America. What amazing feats will they dazzle us with today??

Whew. I'm tired. Back to outrage overload.

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AP Wire | 09/02/2005 | FEMA head: Lawlessness not anticipated
Is this guy the most clueless son-of-a-bitch you have ever seen, or what?

WASHINGTON - The head of the federal disaster relief agency said Friday it's "heartbreaking and very, very frustrating" to witness the virtual anarchy in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and defended the Bush administration's response.

Interviewed on several network morning news shows, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, blamed emergency assistance delivery problems on "the total lack of communications, the inability to hear and have good intelligence on the ground about what was actually occurring there."

Brown appeared the morning after the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, charged that administration officials "don't have a clue" about what's going on in the devastated city that long has been among the nation's premier tourist attractions.

"People are getting the help they need," Brown asserted on NBC's "Today" show. "This is an ongoing disaster. This disaster didn't just end when Katrina left."

But Brown also acknowledged that little in the government's preparedness plan took into account the likelihood of lawlessness in such dire straits.

"Before the hurricane struck I came down here personally and rode the storm out in Baton Rouge," he said. "We had all of our rescue teams, the medical teams, pre-deployed, ready to go. ... The lawlessness, the crime that is occurring, did surprise us."

Hmmmm. They actually HAD a "preparedness plan"? I wonder what the hell is was? Who would get the rebuilding contracts maybe?

People without food and water, watching others DIE around them, turn violent? Who woulda thunk it?

This guy needs to be fired NOW. Everytime he opens his big yap on the TV (which is quite frequently for someone you would think would be incredibly busy) his words are made a lie by video playing on the screen right next to him.

What a bunch of useless fucks. Of course, he probably will get the Presidential Medal of Freedom if history is any indication.

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Monday:

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Troops rush to New Orleans to halt violence, theft - Yahoo! News
Shit meet fan.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - U.S. troops poured into New Orleans on Friday with shoot-to-kill orders to scare off looting gangs so rescuers can help thousands of people stranded by Hurricane Katrina, find the dead and clean up the carnage.

Faced with a growing threat of anarchy after a natural disaster that may have killed thousands of people, the U.S. military rushed in National Guard reinforcements.

Armed looters have had the run of this famed city of jazz musicians and French Quarter bars since Katrina pounded the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday, but they were warned not to push their luck.

"These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said on Thursday night of one group of 300 National Guard troops being deployed here after recent duty in Iraq. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

Most residents are desperate for an end to the violence and a crackdown on looters was ordered when it became clear the looting and gunfire were hurting relief efforts.

Bodies rotted away on busy streets, gunmen opened fire on troops and rescue workers, and seriously ill people braved the floodwaters in wheelchairs to search for help.

I have one question- ARE YOU SAFER NOW, AMERICA?

Reports of the budget cuts to levees have now hit Reuters, so it's not just the "looney left" reporting this anymore. (The "looney left" is actually 24 hours ahead of every major story- that's why I love Kos.)

The media has gone full tilt ballistic on the administration. From another diary by Hunter-

The last twelve hours of news coverage has been nearly overwhelming. Anderson Cooper, Paula Zahn, others, even unapologetic partisans like Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson -- everyone is asking where the government is. (No, I haven't turned to Fox News. I don't have the heart, today.) Anderson Cooper lost it interviewing Sen. Mary Landrieu, countering her litany of thank-yous to a series of politicians with his own encounter with rats eating a body that had been left abandoned in the street for 48 hours. Paula Zahn boggled at FEMA director Michael Brown's declaration that the reason about 15,000 shelter seekers at the New Orleans Convention Center have gone without food or water since the day of the hurricane is because FEMA didn't even know the refugees were there until today.

The common televised theme is of reporters traveling to hard hit areas in New Orleans or the smaller communities, and reporting no FEMA presence, no National Guard presence, no food, no water, no help -- and this is day 5. "Where is the government?" has been the predominant theme of the day. Apologists are being met with barely concealed disgust, in more and more quarters. Bush administration cuts to the levee system are being widely reported. FEMA inaction is being roundly criticized by ever-more-urgent live feeds from disheveled media figures with stunned expressions.

The Convention Center situation appears to be horrific, with deaths of elderly and infants due to dehydration already now occurring. It's not clear if anything can be or is being done tonight, or how many will die between now and the morning, or what will happen then.

The lawlessness is rampant. It's important to note, however, that the lawlessness wasn't rampant on Monday. It wasn't rampant on Tuesday. We heard only twinges of it on Wednesday. Today, from the sounds of the reports, a city devoid of all hope devolved into absolute chaos.

It is simply too stunning, too shocking, too soul-draining. Nobody knows where the emergency relief has been. Nobody can quite understand why the response to the catastrophe only now seems shuddering to life.

The politics are omnipresent, but present only a hollow shell behind which a sea, an absolute frothing sea, of much worse realizations are crowding every mind. This was a disaster the country had been preparing for. This was one of the disasters most predicted, most feared, most planned for. There was two days of advance warning, as the massive, category 5 hurricane shifted purposefully towards New Orleans. This was no terrorist attack -- this time, there was warning. This time, there was knowledge.

And yet, the much-reshuffled domestic security resculpted as a result of 9-11 simply didn't show up. It wasn't there. FEMA, which has been hacked, shuffled, and gutted in the last few years, proved unable to respond to a catastrophic emergency situation. The catastrophic emergency situation, along the Gulf Coast, the one that sounded the alarms two days before landfall, the one that triggered the warnings of nightmare scenarios known for years in advance, and yet if there was any advance plan at all, any knowledge at all, any fathoming at all of how to respond in the fourty-eight hours most critical for the survival of the victims, it didn't show up. The roads were clogged, the islands were flooded, the levees were breached, and homeland security wasn't there, leaving each state, each town, each police force, each wrecked band of shell-shocked survivors to fend, and make do, while convoys were organized and strategies prepared with seeming obliviousness to the urgency of the numbers and clocks. There is... almost nothing meaningful to say.

The apparent and most likely explanations for the failure, known long before the fact, are almost shattering when reread today, while the ongoing catastrophe unfolds around us.

We have witnessed two disasters this week. The first was an act of nature. The second was not. The second disaster, still ongoing, is unforgivable.

That's the only word that comes to mind, a word I keep repeating to myself. These deaths, these men, these women, these infants dying now in these hours didn't have to happen. They did not have to die waiting for convoys to gather outside their city or for reservists to stand alongside their shattered police forces. They did not have to wait in darkness and fear for help to arrive, only to struggle for days without that help ever coming.

This is not politics. This is not partisanship.

This is unforgivable.

And don't forget, when you are hungry, dying of thirst and starvation, no hope of relief from officials, and you decide to break in somewhere to find food or water, your government will be there to SHOOT YOU.

Welcome to the new Third World, coming soon to your hometown.

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Daily Kos: Category 4 Hurricane Determined to Strike U.S. -- Cont.
This about sums it up. I'm going to steal the whole thing. From a brilliant writer named Hunter at Daily Kos-

George W. Bush was once known as the C.E.O. President, a term his handlers eagerly coined in order to convey that the country would from now on be run like a business. That quickly evolved into the less flattering Enron President... then the War President... now it's looking like we can all finally settle on one. George W. Bush: the Disaster President.

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

He honestly said that. If that brings up more than a passing twinge of familiarity, being a more than remarkable restatement of Condi Rice's now-famous assertion to the Senate panel -- then I suppose we shouldn't be surprised.

But it does bring up something that we joke about often, but apparently have never taken quite seriously enough: our President is an idiot. I don't mean an average, run-of-the-mill idiot. I mean an idiot who apparently, for the entire duration of his presidency, literally was paying absolutely no attention to even the most life-threateningly critical tasks of government.

The administration specifically cut the funds to fix these specific levees, in order to specifically divert that Corps money to Iraq, despite urgent warnings and predictions of catastrophic disaster if the levees were breeched. The administration specifically cancelled the Clinton-backed flood control program to preserve and restore the wetlands between New Orleans and the gulf, instead specifically opening parts of that buffer zone for development.

Nobody anticipated this disaster? It was identified by FEMA as one of the top three likeliest major disasters to strike America. (That link, one of countless stories, was from 2001, by the way.) It has been a major disaster scenario for years. Everybody anticipated it, which makes this single statement by George W. Bush possibly the most dishonest, lying, craptacularly false thing he has ever said in his presidency -- even surpassing his now-infamous State of the Union Address. Truly, this is President Bush's blue-dress moment.

And yet, funneling the money into Iraq was more important. You better bet your crapulent, lying, one-track, drink-addled ass that's a political issue.

He also said today:

"I hope people don't play politics at this time of a natural disaster the likes of which this country has never seen."

Oh, I'm touched. Utterly touched. After 9/11, the entire Republican Party went en masse to get Twin Towers ass tattoos. The Republican convention was a wholesale tribute to crass exploitation, the sets themselves designed to evoke the aftermath of the attack. Every domestic and international policy this administration -- no, this entire Republican government -- has produced has been heaved up before the public while waving the spectre of 9/11 as the catch-all vindication of every administration whim. Every tax cut, every civil rights issue, every budget cut, every budget expansion, no matter how tortured the logic must be, has some Republican senator standing on the Senate floor and proudly raping the corpses of that day as justification for their particular agenda item.

Oh, we've seen politicization of disaster. Every Republican campaign for the last four years has revolved around the politicization of disaster.

But Lord help us, George W. Bush is going to get the vapors if anyone asks him to explain his administration's active cuts of the very programs designed to keep New Orleans safe.

Kos has a policy that says "Steal what you want", so distribute this far and wide.

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Bush Taps Father, Clinton for Relief Help - Yahoo! News
Whewww! Finally some REAL MEN on the job...

WASHINGTON - President Bush will tour the hurricane devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims, the White House said Thursday.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush will survey the Alabama and Mississippi coast by helicopter, then go on to New Orleans. He also will tour some locations on the ground. (I bet dimes to dollars right now that "touring the ground" will be cancelled. Unless they want to start a riot.) He got a higher-altitude view Wednesday when Air Force One dropped several thousand feet to fly directly over the region during Bush's flight from his Texas ranch back to Washington.

"The president has wanted to visit the area as soon as possible," McClellan said. "We didn't go sooner because we didn't want to be disruptive of efforts on the ground." (You didn't go sooner because there were fund-raisers and parties to attend, you stupid fuck.)

Bush had said earlier Thursday that thousands more victims of Hurricane Katrina still need to be rescued and acknowledged the frustration of people who need food, water and shelter.

Bush brushed off criticism that he did not return to Washington from his monthlong stay at his Texas ranch on Tuesday, in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Upon returning Wednesday, he held a meeting with top government officials guiding hurricane relief and made remarks in the Rose Garden. (Funny how that speech was held at 5PM in the afternoon. I guess only Iraq gets the prime -time coverage)

"I hope people don't ... play politics during this period of time," he said. "This is a natural disaster the likes of which our country may have never seen before and it's a national emergency. And what we need to do as a nation is come together to solve the problem and not play politics. There'll be ample time for politics."

Ah yes, there it is. Dismiss any and all criticism as "playing politics". I guess the editorial reports in all the major newspapers are just "playing politics". Deny, deflect, obfuscate and flat-out lie. That's the name of the game.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we're having to deal with it and will," he said.

FEMA has been saying for YEARS that the levees would be a problem. But you cut the budget anyway.

We got you now, you lying sack of shit.

If this doesn't push the public to call for impeachment hearings- I don't know what will. Maybe the whole damn country has to be destroyed before we wake up.

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DHS | Department of Homeland Security | Fact Sheet: National Preparedness Month 2004
Bitter irony.

Throughout the month of September, hundreds of activities are planned to highlight the importance of individual emergency preparedness. The National Preparedness Month coalition, which includes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, more than 80 organizations and all 56 states and territories, will encourage Americans to take simple steps now to prepare themselves and their families for any possible emergencies.

Looks like it's a month too late.

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New Orleans Cops Ordered to Stop Looters - Yahoo! News
Interesting. There are two versions of this story, one that emphasizes "food", one that calls people "thugs" and emphasizes the shootings.

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets to stop looting that has turned increasingly hostile as the city plunges deeper into chaos.

"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas, hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said in a statement to The Associated Press.

The number of officers called off the search-and-rescue mission amounts to virtually the entire police force in New Orleans.

Amid the turmoil Wednesday, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break the glass of a pharmacy. The crowd stormed the store, carrying out so much ice, water and food that it dropped from their arms as they ran. The street was littered with packages of ramen noodles and other items.

Looters also chased down a police truck full of food. The New Orleans police chief ran off looters while city officials themselves were commandeering equipment from a looted Office Depot. During a state of emergency, authorities have broad powers to take private supplies and buildings for their use.

At one store, hordes of people from all ages, races and walks of life grabbed food and water. Some drove away with trunkloads of beer. At one point, two officers drew their guns on the looters, but the thieves left without incident.

One young man was seen wading through chest-deep floodwater, carrying a case of soda, after looting a grocery store.

Police officers were asking residents to give up any firearms before they evacuated neighborhoods because police desperately needed the firepower: Some officers who had been stranded on the roof of a hotel said they were being shot at overnight.

"It's really difficult because my opinion of the looting is it started with people running out of food, and you can't really argue with that too much," Nagin said. "Then it escalated to this kind of mass chaos."

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she has asked the White House to send more people to help with evacuations and rescues, thereby freeing up National Guardsmen to stop looters.

Then we have this under the title, "New Orleans Cops Told to Stop Looters" Notice the contrast between the stories.

NEW ORLEANS - With thousands feared dead and the city's remaining residents told to evacuate for weeks, conditions deteriorated further in submerged New Orleans as looting spiraled out of control.

Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and stop thieves who were becoming increasingly hostile.

"They are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas, hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now," Nagin said Wednesday.

Tempers also were starting to flare. Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Miss., fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus and a truck carrying medical supplies for a hospital. Some police officers said they had been shot at.

Even as stopping the looting became a top priority, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

"There are physical threats to safety from roving bands of armed individuals with weapons who are threatening the safety of the hospital," said spokesman Steven Campanini. He estimated there were about 350 employees in the hospital and between 125 to 150 patients.

Looters used garbage cans and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets — even guns. Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass. The driver of a nursing-home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

Both stories are from the AP. It shows the power that words have-one paints a picture of hungry desperate people- the other, lawless bands of armed thugs.

Just be glad it wasn't your city. Apparently the Dept. of Homeland Security, the people who are replacing FEMA, are a big fucking joke. Maybe if New Orleans had been overrun by a gang of gay terrorists giving out free abortions there might have been a more coordinated response to this disaster.

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