Mad Cows?

Well, this explains it: mad cow disease. It’s the only answer. These beef eating "lawmakers" have swiss cheese for brains. Think about it.

It's Mealtime in Washington, and Your Congressman Is Buying

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- It's mealtime in Washington. Do you know where your lawmaker is?

Sam & Harry's, a Dupont Circle steakhouse lined with jazz- themed paintings, may be a good bet: Members of Congress racked up an average bill of $1,971 in 80 visits there in the past 2 1/2 years, according to filings by their political action committees and campaigns. Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and his group dropped $10,500 there one night, the records show.

Or how about the Caucus Room, with its burgundy leather booths and private dining rooms named for presidents? Lawmakers shelled out an average of $1,140 in 157 visits since the start of 2003. And there's Charlie Palmer Steak, where congressional entourages stopped by 160 times. Average tab: $1,303.

It's good to be a restaurant in the nation's capital when lawmakers have stomachs to fill and money to spend. ``About 20 percent of our business comes from congressmen,'' said Ed D'Alessandro, the Caucus Room's general manager. ``Without Congress, we'd have to downsize.''

Members of Congress spent $1.5 million from the beginning of 2003 through last June at the 10 Washington restaurants that reaped the most from the wining and dining, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of figures compiled by Washington-based PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks politicians' spending. The tally counts the bills for each lawmaker's table or function.

Red Meat

Red-meat eateries top the list of Washington's power dining spots. The Caucus Room, a steakhouse founded in 2000 by Democratic lobbyist Tommy Boggs and former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, raked in the most ($292,114) from legislators in the past 2 1/2 years. Sam & Harry's, home of the $40.95 porterhouse, topped the list for the average tab.

Other steakhouses in the top 10 are Charlie Parker (No. 2 in lawmaker expenditures), which offers a touch-screen wine list and a rooftop terrace with views of the Capitol, and the Capital Grille (No. 8), whose menu boasts of beef ``dry-aged on premises.''

Oceanaire Seafood Room (No. 9), an art-deco emporium with red-leather banquettes, and four French restaurants -- Bistro Bis (No. 4), La Colline (No. 5), the Monocle (No. 6) and the now- closed La Brasserie (No. 10) -- also make the lawmakers' favorites list.

Then there is Signatures (No. 7), where former Representative Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, spent $14,000 in PAC money at a January 2003 donor reception. A spokesman for Portman, who is now U.S. trade representative, declined to comment.

Abramoff's Place

Signatures may be losing favor with Capitol Hill after lobbyist Jack Abramoff, its former co-owner, became the subject of federal investigations into whether he defrauded clients. Signatures, named for the autographed letters and other documents it displays and sells for as much as $100,000, saw its take from lawmakers plunge 57 percent in the second quarter of this year from the same period a year earlier.

Abramoff and his co-owners sold the restaurant recently to a group including former Representative Bob Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who is now a Washington lobbyist. The new owners will drop the Signatures name, spokeswoman Linda Roth Conte said.

The lawmakers' favorite restaurants are reluctant to disclose their famous clientele. Sam & Harry's co-owner Larry Work says about 20 congressmen drop by several days a week, but he won't give any names.

Massachusetts Democrat Kennedy has been known to patronize Sam & Harry's. He followed up his $10,500 evening in June 2004 with a $9,685 event last June, according to the spending records. Laura Capps, a Kennedy spokeswoman, said it was fund-raising.

Tourists' Thrills

Representative John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, has spent $50,000 at Sam & Harry's in the past 2 1/2 years, according to the filings. A Boehner spokesman declined to comment.
Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, ran up a tab of more than $15,000 at Capitol Hill restaurants in the second quarter of 2005, including more than $9,000 at the Capital Grille. A Santorum spokesman didn't return phone calls.

The Caucus Room's fame has spread beyond politicians, policy wonks and lobbyists, manager D'Allesandro said. ``Almost every week tourists pop in the door and ask if a senator or congressman is here,'' he said. ``They ask to be seated next to them. They want to bask in the glory.''

While lawmakers don't want to be disturbed by fellow diners, they enjoy being recognized, said Sam & Harry's Work, who also owns a share of the Caucus Room.

The two-week training for new Sam & Harry's employees includes ``making sure they know who's who, being able to put a face with a name,'' Work said. Staffers review the restaurant's list of 100 top customers at weekly meetings, he said.


`Plenty of Lore'

Sam & Harry's also keeps a congressional guide with photos at the front desk. ``If we draw a blank on what a congressman looks like, we look them up,'' Work said.

Restaurant employees are also trained to be discreet, as something more than dining has been known to happen at some lawmakers' bashes.

``There's plenty of lore, but none of it you can publish in a family newspaper,'' said John Breaux, who represented Louisiana in Washington as a senator and representative for 32 years.
His favorite spot was La Colline (``The Hill'' in French), located two blocks from the Senate side of the Capitol, said Breaux, who is now senior counsel at Patton Boggs LLP in Washington.

The Monocle, another French eatery an easy walk from the Capitol, is also a frequent destination for senators, Breaux said. It features ceiling beams stenciled with political quotes such as ``I live by my principles, and one of my principles is flexibility,'' attributed to former Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen.

Stars and Stripes

French criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq presented a ticklish situation for some French restaurants in Washington. La Colline responded by having waiters don stars-and-stripes ties and, following the lead of congressional cafeterias, offering Freedom fries instead of French fries.
``We're not against the French, or for them,'' said La Colline manager Paul Zucconi.
Food may not be the biggest draw for lawmakers. None of their top 10 restaurants makes the Zagat Survey's list of the 40 best for food in the area, and only two -- La Colline and Bistro Bis -- are among Washingtonian magazine's ``100 very best.''

The Caucus Room acknowledges as much on its Web site, where it posts a quote from Newsweek: ``At this restaurant, it's who you meet, not what you eat.''

Sam & Harry's doggy bags tell customers, ``You are where you eat.''

To contact the reporter or editor responsible for this story:
Joe Winski in Washington at jwinski@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 30, 2005 00:29 EDT

Article Sent From Canadian Friend

CTV.ca News Staff

Updated: Wed. Sep. 28 2005 11:36 PM ET

A new study is raising more concerns about global warming in the Canadian Arctic and the potentially catastrophic effects on wildlife.

According to new data from U.S. scientists, the coverage of sea ice in the Arctic has declined for a fourth consecutive year, indicating an alarming long-term trend.

The amount of sea ice in 2005 up to September -- the month when it typically reaches its minimum -- is anticipated to be the lowest in a century.

"Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It clearly indicates a downward trend, not just a short-term anomaly," said Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

Scientists from NSIDC and NASA tracked the ice melt using satellite images.

The data show that on Sept. 21, 2005, the area covered by ice shrank to 5.32 million square kilometres, the lowest recorded since 1978, when satellite records became available.

"In 2005, it's the lowest on the record. We've watched that retreat from year after year," Environment Canada climatologist Tom Agnew told CTV News in Toronto.

Scientists estimate that the current rate of decline in end-of-summer Arctic ice is now approximately eight per cent per decade.

If the current rates of decline continue, the Arctic in the summertime could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century, researchers say.

There is also evidence that the ice is not building back up in the winter, leaving it even more susceptible to warmer summer temperatures.

"We're concerned that it's not going to recover, that the sea ice will eventually disappear within the next fifty to a hundred years," said Agnew.

As well, the springtime melt is beginning much earlier in areas north of Alaska and Siberia. The 2005 melt season occurred about 17 days earlier than the average time.

Combining with these factors are rising Arctic temperatures. Between January and August 2005, the temperature was two to three degrees Celsius warmer than average across most of the Arctic Ocean when compared to the past 50 years.

One area where this warming impact is being felt is the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic.

This summer, the passage, north of the Siberia coast, was completely ice-free between Aug. 15 and Sept. 28. In earlier centuries, many people died trying to navigate the Northwest Passage, battling bitter cold and thick ice.

Dire predictions

Scientists say the most recent estimates suggest that the last time there was an ice-free Arctic was millions of years ago.

Since then, the vast ice fields have always cooled the summer winds that sweep across them on their way south.

But with studies showing increasing hurricane intensity over the past 30 years linked to rising sea temperatures, and recent record heat waves in North America, a growing number of scientists say it's all interconnected.

Inuit living at the ocean's edge in the Arctic are seeing their bays -- once choaked with ice -- are now empty. Waves now lap the shoreline, as the permafrost softens and hunting on ice floes is becoming increasingly difficult, if at all possible.

Polar bears, dependent on the ice pack to reach their prey, are becoming thin, and birds normally confined to spots further south are now at home in the north.

"Now we're seeing the web of life kind of falling apart before our eyes," said Julia Langer of the World Wildlife Fund. "So we see how important the climate ... the stability of climate is to the stability of eco-systems."

It's a threat that's being felt as far away as Parliament Hill in Ottawa, where politicians face a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting that this is not simply nature taking its course.

"Canada must be a leader of climate change," said Environment Minister Stephan Dion. "It's important for us, for our north, for our role in the world."

Dion plans to push the climate agenda at the international climate conference in Montreal beginning Nov. 28.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Inuit hunters who are threatened by the melting of the Arctic plan to file a petition in December. They're accusing the U.S. of violating their human rights by fueling global warming.

President George Bush's administration has opted out of the Kyoto Treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With a report by CTV's Todd Battis in Vancouver

© Copyright 2002-2006 Bell Globemedia Inc.

Letter To A Canadian Friend

G'mornin', doll

Up at 0323 unable to sleep. Dr's appt yesterday and several more in October (for renal ultrasound and etc.). Was woman Dr. with arrogant attitude which was starting to piss me off until I noticed her right hand was hugely swollen which is one of the side effects of radical mastectomy that 'they' don't tell you about until it's too late to do anything about it. Her assistant/RN was writing for her... dr been pullin' da ol' cancer train, so to speak, meaning that my theory that the road to health is best taken in a direction away from drs. is probably the best, all things considered, and even lady docs are victims of modern 'medicine', which made her arrogance appear merely stupid.

Yes: the environment/Bush and Cronies/oil money/are all things currently on my mind in terms of things to watch for in the news...I’m waiting for a copy of Rachel Carson’s book 'Silent Spring' which I want to re-read before I take on the subject too much in blogos. As I remember, Carson stated that the 'cut-off' date for any effective change in our rape of the environment (largely in the pursuit of fossil fuel) was about 1956. Been so long since I read the book I don't exactly remember the details. It came out in mid-60's and she was vilified and deeply discredited because of what she wrote.

Funny. I’m spending a lot of time on history--music/message/ thought/ act/ whatever/ from the time before the 60's up until today and nothing in the way of activism is new. And even putting 'our' (our generation's) lives on the line was not enough. The journey to destruction culminating in the neo-conservative looting of the planet has been going on for a very long time.

I despair of change...the dolts running things down here are the worst of stupid and self-serving. I delight in anything that exposes them. Present events started out long before the assassination of JFK. That was the beginning of the end and nobody listened.

'Conspiracy' ( con's piracy?) ‘theorist’ was a label guaranteed to discredit anyone with a hint of truth to write about.

Nothing much has changed except Hurricane Katrina exposed the misery of poverty in America. Soon, the more elite (read those with a roof over their heads and a full belly) will simply go back to sleep and the neo-cons will continue to work their retro-magic of grinding anyone not in the top economic 1% into the mud of yet another Katrina.

I read on my site meter that I—I—an old woman—get regular visits from 'Reston, Virginia' (the home of the CIA, doncha know...) on my FancyRage site...and I can disappear compliments of the 'Patriot Act' without benefit of arrest or any of the former legal rights that allowed dissent in America. I can be held forever without anyone knowing my whereabouts. Anything can be done to me in the name of 'patriotism'.

I reiterate: my family came to this country in 1735 and fought to secure the freedoms of America in the American Revolution. I will gladly die for those freedoms and have a moral imperative to defend my country's ideals. It is as inherent in my genes as having two arms and two legs and being fearless in the defense of those freedoms with my words—IF the war comes to my door, I have a moral obligation to take up arms in defense of my country. In the meantime, I have no right to take a war to strangers who do not believe what I believe. And NOBODY has the right to change the basic tenets of American freedoms as set forth by the writers of The Declaration of Independence.

That is the average American, I believe...and that is no enemy of the Inuit or the polar bear. There is, however, an element of fear that is entirely new to my dissent.

(My, how I do run on...) hugs. dn

Let Sense, Not Fear, Guide The Patriot Act

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Editorial From The Seattle Times

Let sense, not fear, guide the Patriot Act

The Patriot Act, now up for reauthorization, was passed at a time of maximum fear. America had been attacked. Security was the urgent concern. Now is a more normal time, and Congress needs to rewrite this law to make it consistent with our civil liberties.

The Constitution promises all Americans "due process of law" before government takes away life, liberty or property. It also guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The police may search, but first they need to convince a judge that they know what they're looking for, need to have it and have "probable cause" to look in a specific place.

The current Patriot Act compromises these principles, sometimes severely. One section of the act allows the police to secretly search a home and not tell the owner for six months. "Sneak-and-peek" searches existed before the Patriot Act, and may be justified when evidence is vulnerable to quick destruction. The Patriot Act makes such searches easier.

The act also allows the FBI to seize a person's medical, business, library and gun-purchase records by getting an order from a special court that does not demand probable cause. This "FISA Court" was set up under a 1978 law for espionage cases only. The Patriot Act expanded it to other cases. It also declared that no one who receives a FISA warrant can tell anyone else about it, which means a FISA warrant cannot be contested.

The act also expands the use of National Security Letters, which are a kind of warrant that the Justice Department writes for itself, authorizing its agents to seize such things as records of money movements, telephone calls and Internet visits. Recipients of a National Security Letter are not allowed to tell anyone about them, and so cannot contest them.

National Security Letters were authorized by a 1986 law for terrorism only. The Patriot Act expanded them for other uses.

The House and Senate have each passed bills reauthorizing the Patriot Act. The House bill fixes none of these problems. The Senate bill fixes some of them. It is not ideal, but is the better alternative.

Our delegation should support the Senate version — and keep aware of civil liberties, which always tend to diminish during times of conflict and war.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

The Dead

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. "

ROBERT KENNEDY
“At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
“Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail.”

MALCOLM X
"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation."

JIMI HENDRIX
I just want to talk to you I won't uh, do you no harm I just want to know about your diff'rent lives On this here people farm I heard some of you got your families Living in cages tall and cold And some just stay there and dust away Past the age of old. Is this true ? Please let me talk to you.

JANIS JOPLIN
“Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends. Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends, So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”

JIM MORRISON
“This is the end, beautiful friend This is the end, my only friend The end of our elaborate plans The end of ev'rything that stands The end”

MAMA CASS
“The voice of the people should echo far and wide
Instead of keeping what they feel bottled up inside
Let the people have their say
Tomorrow isn't far away
It should be better than today
If we raise our voices”

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY, JR
John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, died when their plane crashed in the waters off Martha's Vineyard, Ma. Kennedy was flying the Piper Saratoga plane that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.

Being Conquered

“I think you do not know anything about being conquered and so you think it is not bad.”
--Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell To Arms"

washingtonpost.com

Bush Urges Shift in Relief Responsibilities
Congress Asked to Consider Placing Pentagon in Charge of Disaster Response

(Full Text of Article)

Bush is asking Congress to consider a major change, potentially shifting federal responsibility for major natural disasters from the Department of Homeland Security to the nation's top military generals. The Defense Department has been hesitant to take such a role because of sensitivity to the idea of adopting a police presence on U.S. soil and because of strains on the armed forces from the war in Iraq.

Wait: didn’t we have a perfectly good response outfit in FEMA before Bush and Cronies decimated it? Now it looks like Bush and Cronies want to grab even more power to rape my country and my people. Why don’t we put FEMA back together the way it was? Does this mean that active duty troops will have carte blanche to operate in this country whenever Bush and Cronies decide a military presence will benefit somebody’s secret agenda?

Wake up, you idiots!

When September 11, 2001 came with terrorists attacks, Bush and Cronies used this event (that they may or may not have orchestrated for just this purpose) to take control of freedoms that Americans have taken for granted since America was created.

Perhaps our complacency and naiveté is just now causing us, too late in some cases, to question the motivations of this group of pirates currently destroying our country for personal financial gain under the steadily growing-in-popularity label of “Neo-Conservative” with the requisite cadre of ‘involved’ college students and think-tank ‘brains’ (who aren’t any smarter than the rest of us—just more quoted by the phony intelligentsia that passes for journalists today.) (You good guys know I’m not talking about you.)

"We are not talking about DOD taking over federal response efforts to a catastrophe from start to finish," Knocke said. Instead, he cited three examples -- maintaining social stability, urban search-and-rescue support, and damage assessment -- when state, local or other federal agencies are incapacitated or overwhelmed.

The military is also allowed to provide whatever other disaster support is necessary. Traditionally the military acts at the behest of the lead federal agency -- in the case of a natural disaster, it would be the Federal Emergency Management Agency and DHS -- and waits until requested to provide large numbers of troops. There are exceptions when the military has acted on its own, as a commander did in response to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

This means that the Department of Defense, in Bush’s plan, would be the lead agency in a ‘disaster’ and responsible for calling out active duty military within the boundaries of The United States of America? There’s something here that sounds like the aftermath of September 11, 2001, which is Bush and Cronies using any event to further their takeover of this country and limit the response of our citizens to protest, organize, or anything else that promotes democracy.

Call me paranoid...just don’t call me stupid.

The current National Response Plan developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks gives the defense secretary authority to provide military support for disaster relief efforts at the president's direction. However, active-duty troops generally cannot take on domestic law enforcement roles, which is what many experts said was desperately needed to stop the rioting and violence in the streets of New Orleans after Katrina hit. National Guard troops under state control are allowed to take on law enforcement responsibilities.

The “rioting and violence” for the most part, was desperate folks looking for food and water because “our” government failed to get off its ass and provide essential supplies.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full Text of Editorial from The New York Times
September 26, 2005

Faking the Katrina Inquiry

As the nation reels from Rita's devastation along the Gulf Coast, any hope for a thorough investigation of government's gross mismanagement of Katrina is quietly ebbing away behind the political levees of Washington. The White House and Republican-controlled Congress, resisting popular support for an independent, nonpartisan commission, remain determined to run self-serving, bogus investigations.

President Bush has designated his domestic security adviser to deliver the supposedly no-holds-barred investigation he promised after his early embarrassment over Katrina. In a similar retreat, Congressional Republican leaders' ballyhooed promise for a special two-house select committee to fathom government's failures has already been scrapped. Democrats are understandably demanding equal membership and subpoena power - if not a 9/11-type independent commission - for such a task. But the House majority refuses to yield its edge in dominating this politically explosive issue. And the Senate goes its own way, advancing some helpful but totally inadequate ideas for post-hurricane oversight by an inspector general and a reconstruction financial officer.

The public should not be misled by the spectacle tomorrow when Michael Brown, the disgraced and departed director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will most likely be pilloried in an appearance before a Republican-heavy House committee. Scapegoating Mr. Brown is not enough. Lawmakers should be looking at wider mismanagement. The case of David Safavian, the White House's top federal procurement official, comes to mind. He was already enmeshed in the lucrative Gulf Coast rebuilding plans when he had to resign abruptly to face arrest on charges of obstructing justice in a deepening investigation into lobbyist corruption in Washington.

It's obvious that any honest inquiry into how the nation was caught unprepared must list administration cronyism as a topic of investigation as much as Katrina's timeline. Mr. Safavian was a G.O.P. loyalist and veteran lobbyist appointed to run the entire government's purchasing policy, apparently on the basis of patronage influence, not professional credentials.

There is no way to whitewash a hurricane; a government dominated by one party should be disqualified from investigating itself. Just as President Bush repeatedly fought the creation of the 9/11 commission until public pressure forced him to yield, so should the public now demand that the administration and Congress get real about Katrina.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Global Warming

This IS global warming, says environmental chief

(Full text of article from The Independent)

As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist blames climate change

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor


Published: 23 September 2005

Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the "smoking gun" of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes.

The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. "The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming."

In a series of outspoken comments - a thinly veiled attack on the Bush administration, Sir John hit out at neoconservatives in the US who still deny the reality of climate change.

Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: "If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation." As he spoke, more than a million people were fleeing north away from the coast of Texas as Rita, one of the most intense storms on record, roared through the Gulf of Mexico. It will probably make landfall tonight or early tomorrow near Houston, America's fourth largest city and the centre of its oil industry. Highways leading inland from Houston were clogged with traffic for up to 100 miles north.

There are real fears that Houston could suffer as badly from Rita just as New Orleans suffered from Hurricane Katrina less than a month ago.

Asked what conclusion the Bush administration should draw from two hurricanes of such high intensity hitting the US in quick succession, Sir John said: "If what looks like is going to be a horrible mess causes the extreme sceptics about climate change in the US to reconsider their opinion, that would be an extremely valuable outcome."

Asked about characterising them as "loonies", he said: "There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate."

"I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer."

With his comments, Sir John becomes the third of the leaders of Britain's scientific establishment to attack the US over the Bush government's determination to cast doubt on global warming as a real phenomenon.

Sir John's comments follow and support recent research, much of it from America itself, showing that hurricanes are getting more violent and suggesting climate change is the cause.

A paper by US researchers, last week in the US journal Science, showed that storms of the intensity of Hurricane Katrina have become almost twice as common in the past 35 years.

Although the overall frequency of tropical storms worldwide has remained broadly level since 1970, the number of extreme category 4 and 5 events has sharply risen. In the 1970s, there was an average of about 10 category 4 and 5 hurricanes per year but, since 1990, they have nearly doubled to an average of about 18 a year. During the same period, sea surface temperatures, among the key drivers of hurricane intensity, have increased by an average of 0.5C (0.9F).

Sir John said: "Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun. It's a fair conclusion to draw that global warming, caused to a substantial extent by people, is driving increased sea surface temperatures and increasing the violence of hurricanes."

© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

'Stupid' Fits

Excerpts from editorial by E. J. Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post

washingtonpost.com

Fiscal Policy: Why 'Stupid' Fits

By E. J. Dionne Jr.Friday, September 23, 2005; A23

And it's hard to give the fiscal conservatives too much credit, since they would cut $80 billion from Medicare and $50 billion from Medicaid over five years and suggest reductions in school lunches, rent subsidies for the poor and foreign aid, among other things. The idea seems to be that to help Katrina's poor and suffering victims, other poor and suffering people will have to sacrifice.

Here's a fact getting far too little attention: The cost this year alone of the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 comes to $225 billion. In other words, the revenue lost because of tax cuts going through this year without any congressional action would more than pay the costs of Katrina recovery.

I'd have much more respect for these guys if they just came out and said: "Look, we love deficit spending. That's why we waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cut taxes at the same time. It's why we'll talk about offsets for Katrina and Rita but never enact them, except maybe a few cuts in programs for the poor. All we really care about are passing tax cuts -- and popular spending programs that get us reelected so we can enact more tax cuts."

According to Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty," Cheney referred to the former president in insisting to his administration colleagues that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and that Republicans owed themselves more tax cuts. "We won the midterms," Cheney said. "This is our due."

Which brings us back to that word "stupid." My dictionary tells me it means not only "lacking in ordinary intelligence" but also "dazed" and "stupefied." The crowd running our government is dazed and stupefied by a theory that sees throwing ever-larger sums to the wealthy in the form of tax cuts as so good, right and important that all the ordinary rules of finance and economics can be thrown out the window. If it was already stupid to pursue more tax cuts once the country decided to wage a large war on terrorism, it is supremely stupid to stay on the same course now that Katrina has added to our fiscal burdens and Rita, God help us, threatens to add more.

Or maybe it's the rest of us who should be called stupid if we keep taking these guys at their word. Are we all so dazed that we'll keep believing them even after a hurricane has blown away their alibis?

© 2005 The Washington Post Company


Full Text of Editorial

Grand Jury Report on the Sexual Abuse of Minors by Clergy

Philadelphia Attorney General’s Office

Grand Jury Report on the Sexual Abuse of Minors by Clergy

http://www.philadelphiadistrictattorney.com/pages/1/index.htm

Philadelphia Grand Jury Report on Pedophile Priests

And the archbishops who protect them. Entire 418-page report available, plus crucial excerpts guaranteed to turn your stomach. Example: "A girl, 11 years old, was raped by her priest and became pregnant. The Father took her in for an abortion."

http://www.thememoryhole.org/

Oh, Look! Some Of Them Are Waking Up!

September 21, 2005

Governors Ask for Inquiry on Oil Prices

By THE NEW YORK TIMES
CHICAGO, Sept. 20 - The governors of eight states sent a letter on Tuesday to President Bush and Congress calling for an investigation into profits made by oil companies after Hurricane Katrina and asking for legislation that would require the companies to refund to customers any profits deemed excess.

"When the wholesale price of gas went up by 60 cents almost overnight, oil companies were obviously using the most devastating natural disaster in our nation's history to reap a windfall at the expense of American consumers," said the letter, which was initiated by Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin and was signed by governors from Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

"To price-gouge consumers under normal circumstances is dishonest enough," the letter stated, "but to make money off the severe misfortune of others is downright immoral."

The letter cited an analysis by Donald A. Nichols, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, who reported that gas prices surged disproportionately compared with crude oil price increases. The price markup from crude oil to gasoline has almost tripled since the hurricane, the report said.

Full text of the article.

PHOTO ID'S LOCK SOME CITIZENS OUT OF VOTING

By Cynthia TuckerMon Sep 19, 6:01 PM ET
If you live in America's fortunate half -- the half whose household earnings are above the median of $44,000 or so a year -- you probably own a house, one or two cars and have health insurance. So it's hard to imagine that some Americans are too poor to have an automobile. And it's simply inconceivable that there are people so disconnected from the mainstream that they have no driver's license or similar ID to allow access to commercial airline flights, checking accounts or voting booths.

Full text of the article.

Diabolical
So. Disenfranchise the population that doesn’t have a driver’s license, then overcharge the population that drives? Whoaa...both ends against the middle in NeoConservativeLand? Diabolical in the Encarta Dictionary, means, of the devil or extremely cruel or evil. You decide which meaning is appropriate.

September 21, 2005

U.S. Asks Court to Dismiss Abuse Suit That Names Pope

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By The Associated Press The Justice Department has told a Texas court that a lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian should be dismissed because the pontiff enjoys immunity as head of state of the Holy See.

Full text of the article.

The Boss Catholic isn’t responsible for condoning the rape of millions of children by psychopathic “priests”, but he runs everything else just fine?


The Case For a 'No' Vote on Roberts

By E. J. Dionne Jr.Saturday, September 17, 2005; A21

"Where are you?"

That was the question Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) almost plaintively posed to Judge John Roberts as the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings neared their conclusion. It is the right question.

Full text of the article.

Roberts needs to be a little less slick and a little less neoconservative: what gives him the RIGHT to hide who he is from The People of The United States of America?

Just A Thought:

Isn’t it odd that the most sensible, sane and logical portion of our population is also the poorest bunch in the nation? Wonder how that happened...could it be that sensible, sane, logical people who ‘refuse to toe the line’ have been discriminated against all along? Think about it: if you don’t conform early on, like grammar school, high school, social status,whatever, then you are committed to a path that runs away from the money. No college diploma, no money. No money, poverty. As more and more of the jobs available to the ‘working class’ have shipped to other countries, more and more of the non-conforming people in this country (the TRUE Americans) have been pushed deeper and deeper into poverty and away from the benefits of health insurance, education, status, and all the other accoutrements of ‘money’, about which the rich and greedy have grown steadily more possessive.

Another Diaspora

The word Diaspora in relation to events in New Orleans has been crossing my mind for a few days now, so I hied myself over to Wikipedia and started to research the word, and the more I read, the more I realized that this is another diaspora of black folks.

An entire culture, for whatever reasons has been uprooted and for all intents and purposes destroyed and the federal government is still dragging its feet and making slime-y backroom deals, handing out favors to cronies, using immense amounts of monies to line more rich pockets.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see New Orleans coming back to the way it was and I don’t see it being ‘better’. Take a look at this information on the folks (poor, predominately black, left over from Hurricane Charley in Florida, who are still living in trailers on concrete with poor facilities, one step up from living in tents.

So. What I’ve decided to do is research this word, diaspora, and in particular, ‘African Diaspora’ which is new to me although it makes me feel guilty that today is the first time I’ve ever heard the term.

I’m not wanting to come across as writing an apologia for being a white southerner—because my point is that it’s about being poor.

It doesn’t matter anymore what color you are: what matters is that you are not in George Bush’s “1%”—meaning the 1 percent of the population of this country that owns all the money. (He calls them “my people”.) And those are the folks filling their pockets with all the money being made and that will be made in rebuilding New Orleans.

It will be done as cheaply as possible and as quickly as possible and as soon as the media attention, the stars, the prominent newscasters, move on to the next ‘disaster’ nothing much will happen unless this event has so shocked the powerful black folks in our country, and the powerful politicians who have hearts instead of wallets in their chests that they continue to focus on the Bush Regime and bring it to its knees and out of power.

I can only imagine my country if people like Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey were running it, or for that matter, any average citizen with a real heart and soul who would put people before profits...

Barack Obama

Calling talk among Republican senators of proceeding with a plan to repeal the estate tax "mind-boggling," Sen. Barak Obama, D-Ill., said the country could not fight a war in Iraq, rebuild the Gulf region and deal with other domestic needs while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

"We need some adult supervision of the budget process. And we need to take responsibility for this process. That's something that we need from the president as well as our congressional leaders," Obama told CBS' Face the Nation.

At Least Somebody Cares About Rich and/or White Children

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said there is a need for dramatic spending cuts in "big-ticket items."

Raising taxes or not making permanent the president's tax cuts is not the answer now, said Pence, head of the Republican Study Group, the spearhead group for the GOP's most conservative members.

"We simply cannot break the bank of the federal budget," Pence told ABC's "This Week."

"We simply can't allow a catastrophe of nature to become a catastrophe of debt for our children and grandchildren," he said.

If people like Rep. Pence had taken care of business with the good of the country in mind, we wouldn't need to find billions of dollars. We could have fixed the "catastrophe of debt" for mere millions, but these folks were too busy stuffing pork into their own districts in order to assure re-election so they could keep on stuffing the trough, and probably, their own pockets.

And you can bet that each and every one of these "conservative members" is trying to figure out the best way to get in on the billions being shipped off to the Gulf Coast, although it would appear that Bush and cronies have the upper hand in pocket stuffing.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said tax increases will not be a part of the recovery plan he intends to offer this week. Although cuts in spending and delays in spending already approved will not be in his proposal, Vitter said he is open to considering such actions.

Vitter said people should not take on faith that Republicans will make cuts in light of the high spending during the Bush administration.

"We haven't been disciplined enough over the last 10 years. We need to do that, and we needed to do that before Katrina. We still need to do that over the medium and long term," Vitter said.

Anybody have any ideas on how to stop this legal Mafia?

(If fellow Republicans are saying things like this, how do any of us get control of our country?)

And, mercy, even Bill Clinton managed to stand up on his hind legs and say: "We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year," Clinton said.

"I don't think it makes any sense. I think it's wrong."

Jeez, Bill, nobody cares what the Republicans have got on you--nobody cares you got busted for hanky-panky in the Oval Office. Nobody cares what you did. But we surely do need you to stand up for your country now, and be more than Bush's other trained pet.

We need more heroes. And heroines.

These quotes (and others in this post) are from an editorial published in The Washington Post this morning. Full text of the editorial is here.

Full Text Editorial International Herald Tribune

Not the Sun King after all
By Andrew J. Bacevich The Boston Globe
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2005


BOSTON

On three occasions in the past four years the United States has suffered catastrophic failure. Since each of these disasters - 9/11, the Iraq quagmire and now Hurricane Katrina - occurred on George W. Bush's watch, many Americans hold the president personally responsible.

But hammering Bush amounts to an exercise in scapegoating that lets others - starting with ourselves - off the hook. In fact, the underlying explanation for these calamities lies in the delusions to which Americans in recent years have readily subscribed. The defining "truths" of the age have turned out to be anything but true.

When Communism collapsed in 1989, Americans naïvely believed the world had been transformed, profoundly and irrevocably. History itself had supposedly ended. Democratic capitalism had triumphed, settling the last really big questions. With nothing left to fight about, inhabitants of the "new world order" would tend to more mundane concerns: for some, the creation of wealth; for others, consumption.

The Cold War segued into the so-called Information Age. Thanks to the computer and the Internet, knowledge was ostensibly empowering the individual as never before. Americans were told and naïvely believed that in a networked world, risk, uncertainty, and surprise were becoming obsolete. At long last, man controlled his own destiny.

Furthermore, the United States occupied a position of unrivaled pre-eminence. Economically, technologically and above all militarily dominant, the United States claimed the mantle of "indispensable nation." Americans were told and naïvely believed that permanent and unquestioned global primacy was theirs for the taking. The Unipolar Moment was at hand.

Embodying this claim to supremacy was the presidency itself. By the 1990s, the only office that mattered was the Oval Office. Surrounded by courtiers and sycophants, his every gesture recorded, his every word parsed, the president became a cyber-age version of the Sun King. However naïvely, Americans attributed to "the most powerful man in the world" something approaching omnipotence.

Events have exposed each of these notions as fraudulent. If history ever ended, it resumed with a vengeance on 9/11. Disputes over identity, culture and religion suppressed during the Cold War erupted in its aftermath. There remain all sorts of things to fight about.

Meanwhile, a succession of nasty surprises has shredded the pretensions of the Information Age. All the billions spent on surveillance systems, high-speed communications, video-conferencing, and computer models have neither enhanced Washington's ability to anticipate events nor have they enabled senior officials to accurately gauge the consequences of U.S. actions. The increased volume of information available has not yielded sound judgment nor has it provided an antidote to ineptitude.

As for the indispensable nation, far from standing astride the world, the United States, hemorrhaging red ink, is today desperately seeking breathing space to reconstitute itself. Iraq was conceived as a short war, producing a quick victory. Instead, it has become a tar baby that has left the mystique of the American military establishment in tatters.

Hurricane Katrina, meanwhile, has exposed the dirty little secret of a supposedly classless society: While many Americans enjoy affluence or at least decency, others subsist in squalor and neglect.

Finally, there is the cult of the presidency: Notwithstanding the ongoing imperial masquerade in America's Emerald City on the Potomac, it turns out that the chief executive has about as much control over events as Dorothy's wizard. The problem is not with this particular incumbent, but with wildly over-inflated expectations of what any president can actually accomplish.

Could a fourth catastrophe be waiting in the wings?

Certainly, there are plenty of plausible candidates: the permanent end of "cheap" oil, a WMD attack anywhere in North America, the "Big One" in California, to name just a few. The prospect of such an event ought to concentrate the mind. Reducing the likelihood of such a catastrophe or limiting the damage should it occur requires first that Americans shed the delusions to which they have fallen prey. Otherwise, like the sucker who keeps going back for another bottle of snake oil, we will have only ourselves to blame.

(Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of international relations at Boston University, is the author of ''The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.'')


Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com

Karl Rove In Charge?

washingtonpost.com

Who's in Charge? Karl Rove!

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 15, 2005; 12:00 PM

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson's story in the New York Times this morning:

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

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image.

That is Rove's hallmark.

Full Text of Washington Post Article

Diaspora Inevitable

Excerpts from a Washington Post article on the aftermath of Hurricane Charlie in Florida

Hurricane Charlie

FEMA City

500 trailers

1,500 people

The hurricane began that slide, destroying hundreds of modest homes and apartments along both sides of the Peace River as it enters Charlotte Harbor, and almost all of Punta Gorda's public housing.

Then as the apartments were slowly restored -- a process made more costly and time-consuming because of a shortage of contractors and workers -- landlords found that they could substantially increase their rents in the very tight market.

As a result, the low-income working people most likely to have been displaced by the hurricane are now most likely to be displaced by the recovery, too.

"You almost hate to say this because of the difficulties so many people have had, but Charley tore down some buildings that needed to come down and cleared areas for much higher kinds of uses," said City Manager Howard Kunik.

Those fears were stoked last month when the city made clear that it plans to tear down a public housing complex on the waterfront to make way for much higher-income people.

"That land was just too valuable to have poor people on it," said community leader Isaac Thomas. He said local government is trying to help him and other black leaders save some of the modest but historic homes in the African-American East End, but that "it's a really uphill fight."

Full text of Washington Post article.

Barack Obama

"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen. Barack Obama said last week on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

It ain't just New Orleans, Mr. Obama.

Bye-Bye Bush

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - 12:00 AM

E.J. Dionne / Syndicated columnist

The Bush Era — lost in the surging waters of New Orleans

WASHINGTON — The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them — and the country.

Recent months, and especially the recent two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after 9/11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him a leader, but he who was lucky to be the president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to in the months immediately after 9/11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship.

He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used a debate over relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terror to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through.

The president assumed things would turn out fine on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Friday, Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf states after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had, by then, penetrated the country's consciousness.
The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the last two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda — for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Gulf region and for new approaches to the problems created over the last four and a half years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago.

Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in — and eventually out of — Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes.
And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

And what of Bush, who has more than three years left in his term? Paradoxically, his best hope lies in recognizing that the Bush Era, as he and we have known it, really is gone. He can decide to help us in the transition to what comes next. Or he can stubbornly cling to his past and thereby doom himself to frustrating irrelevance.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

Project On Government Oversight

If you haven't seen this website, take a look. These folks are digging through the dirt to let us know what's happening and keeping track of the mischief that's passing for 'government' these days.

Diaspora

Here it is: in black and white, written by reputable journalists and published by the most reliable news organizations this country has to offer. What’s going to happen now that some of us are paying attention to what’s going on in our government? Impeachment and a thorough cleaning out of this nest of parasites that are sucking the blood from our country?
Or more hand-wringing and Diaspora (defined in The Encarta Dictionary as a scattering of a people, language, or culture that was formerly concentrated in one place)?

All The President’s Friends

Bush Cronies to Mop Up Katrina

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience

These three headlines and links to the full text of the articles should be enough to wake up the most comatose citizens of this country, the good ol’ USA—or what’s left of us.

I’m a native North Carolinian: a Southerner by birth, born when segregation was a real thing with separate water fountains at the local Sears and separate entrances to the bus station, among other humiliations for black folks to overcome. I left the South, and I traveled the world and the United States and over time I learned to overcome the innate prejudice that any white Southerner born in those times has had to overcome in order to be a human being. I have learned that black doesn’t rub off. I have learned that the hair on the head of a black child is soft and it’s okay to touch: it’s okay to love a black person. Also along the way, I have learned that the black race is the stronger race...both in heart and in genetics. What I have learned in my travels is that anywhere I go, if I find the black section of town, I am at home. The black culture is the same no matter where it resides: the love of family, the devotion of parents to children, the devotion of children to parents. I won’t speak of the exceptions—that’s not my point—every race has bad apples. But. Generally speaking, the black folks have carried their culture from Africa to the United States of America and no matter how we (white people) have tried to destroy it, that culture has remained intact and presently represents the only hope that my country has: we need a black woman in the White House. We need her sons and daughters taking a good hard look at what’s become of this country under the past few administrations and we need the change that only heart and soul and love and down-home values can bring.

Barring a ‘black woman in the White House’, we need people who care—the current crop of pirates certainly doesn’t.

Heartsick.

Here are some headlines:

“U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules”

“Bush Lifts Wage Rules for Katrina”

“Firms With White House Ties Get Katrina Contracts”

The list is endless and each day we are hit in the face with these headlines—the ‘War on Terrorism” is a war on America perpetrated by the idiots we’ve ‘elected’. We continue to think that each headline will cause them to take a step back and behave themselves as Americans. But they don’t. These people are our enemies. These are the people we need to be making war on. It’s a shameful thing that our best leaders in this crisis are Oprah Winfrey and Ray Nagin because they are speaking the truth. We know it when we hear it but we are overcome with petty riches and inertia. These dogs of capitalism have our country in their teeth and they are ripping the fabric of America into tatters out of personal greed. I despair for my country.

I’m a 61-year-old grandmother. Come and get me if you must in order to shut me up but until my small voice is silenced I will continue to speak my mind.

Full text of these articles can be found at Textcitations.

A Word About Andrew Vachss

This man can write, and he writes about fighting the abuse of the helpless and underprivileged; he writes about revenge. I like that. If you happen to pass by my page, do yourself a favor and read any one of his many books. Also, see the link in the sidebar of this blog.

Costly facility for 1 high-risk sex offender

Twenty-five surveillance cameras, 17 state employees, 12-foot security walls and a $1.6 million annual budget — all for one high-risk sex offender.
That is the reality for Washington's new six-bed halfway house for "sexually violent predators" in Seattle's Sodo district, which is preparing to open its 1,800-pound magnetic-locked doors next week for a single resident.

From The Seattle Times—(for full text of article by Jonathan Martin, Seattle Times staff reporter)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002463421_sexoffender01m.html

Tendentious

Tendentious - written or spoken by somebody who obviously wants to promote a particular cause or who supports a particular viewpoint


It’s not about race: it’s about poverty. It’s about money.

All we poor folks are the new niggahs, sucking profits from the rich, making them angry because their taxes support us when their rape of the world has caused our poverty.

I see it as a pedestrian trying to cross the street from the bus stop to get home. I see the callous disregard for the life of someone who isn’t rich, isn’t driving a big, fat, gas-sucking SUV, talking on a cell phone, and holding a hot paper cup of Starbucks in their other hand when they flash through the crosswalk at higher than the speed limit even though other cars have stopped to let me cross.

I’ve taken to carrying pennies in my pocket, and once they’ve sped past a little bit, I spin a penny into their rear quarter panel. Sounds like a gunshot, from their reactions—but they don’t know where it came from, because I’m an old woman looking in the other direction.

Some old folks who couldn’t move too fast have been killed in the local crosswalks because of this superior, arrogant disregard for anyone not of the ‘moneyed class’. The sheer arrogance...the sheer ignorance...the sheer idea that these stupid “rich” folks who are living a more hand-to-mouth existence every single day would so disregard the plight of the poorest among them, when every moment brings poverty closer to their personal doors.

I have had some practice at ‘surviving’. I have made do with flour and water and a little saved-over bacon grease. In a fearsome pinch, in order to feed my grandchildren, I could kill anything. I can purify water and I can start a fire with just about anything anywhere. Me and mine are the real survivors, and to make sure that we survive, I will happily dine on arrogant yuppies if need be.

Word.

Ray Nagin, The Mayor of New Orleans

I listened to the impassioned plea of Ray Nagin, and also to the man's willingness to put his entire career on the line for his city, and I listened to the undeniable truth in his words. If you read this, and you haven't heard his words this link will take you to another of my sites where you can either read the transcript of his conversation or link to a recording and listen to him. Please do so: he may be one of the few politicians in this country who is not afraid to tell the truth.

Genocide In America

The majority of desperate people in New Orleans are black, but there’s some white people in there, too. The commonality is the level of poverty: I can hear the ‘inside’ comments of our “leaders”. “Well, there’s going to be a big reduction in welfare, social security, public assistance—if we just wait a little longer.” Maybe I’m being simplistic, but I swear to God, these Republican arseholes are capable of doing this, based on what I’ve seen since they started running my country.

The puppet masters (whoever they may be—oil barons of one stripe or the other, I suspect)—have finally turned W. loose without a script at hand for him to read from and he’s mouthing the most banal of platitudes, and hugging on folks and accepting criticism: “the response is unacceptable...”, but it amounts to exactly nothing. What’s done is not going to be undone by another rich white mouth growing fatter on oil profits from inflated prices brought on by the tragedies of New Orleans. W. and his cronies had everything to gain by withholding essential aid from the people, and I, for one, have come to expect that this group of swine will consider profits before people in any event that enables the super-rich to get richer.

Our children are getting maimed and dying in Iraq. Somebody asked, “Why?”. W. wouldn’t take the time to answer because his keepers wouldn’t give him a script, is what I think.

Now, they have no choice. This man, “our President”, has to make an appearance and his real lack of anything approaching empathy and humanity is apparent.

Did y’all notice that “aid” waited until W. could lead the parade into New Orleans?

That’s all of us there in that flooded city. When will it be our turn to bite the bullet for the super rich?