Republicans Have Pillaged, Now Comes the Raping

We've seen, in the slow, uncoordinated and sometimes ineffectual response to Katrina, the results of the Republican pillaging of our federal government: tax cuts to the richest, huge and uncontrolled spending on the illegal Iraq war and nearly lethal cuts to social programs for the poorest among us. These have left the government nearly, but not quite small enough to "drown in a bathtub."

Now comes the final raping of America.

While Democrats and a few moderate Republicans try to figure out how to help those who've been devastated by Katrina and her aftermath, those furthest to the Right are using this catastrophe as an excuse to flay the last bit of flesh from the federal government so that it can finally be drowned.

If you think I'm kidding, here's what Republicans are saying in response to Hillary Clinton's musings on perhaps needing to raise some peoples' taxes to pay for all of this:

So how will Congress pay for the new spending needs due to Katrina? Part of Clinton’s answer was to raise taxes. “We should be prepared to ask for sacrifice particularly from the richest people in America,” she argued.

But DeLay rejected any such notion. “The worst thing we could do in response to a recovery like this is to attack the economy,” he told reporters. “The worst thing we could do… is a windfall profits tax on the oil corporations, so that they won’t have the money to reinvest in developing more oil and more gas. The worst thing we could do is to increase taxes on the economy, an economy that now has to be a major part of the recovery.”

Some congressional Republicans indicated the hurricane recovery may point to an “era of smaller government” — requiring a suspension of regulations that slow down re-building of highways and more urgently needed gasoline refineries.

Even in wake of this appalling natural disaster, this band of thugs - no better than the looters in the darkest hours of New Orleans' misery - they can only think of how to benefit themselves and their largest contributors. All at the expense of the poorest and most miserable of American citizens. Instead of a helping hand, Republicans - again - are telling all of us to bend over.

They disgust me.

Outrage Fatigue?

With work and the fast pace of the news I can't even begin to keep up with all the incompetence and lies of BushCo. in the aftermath of Katrina. Every news story I read about the bungled response from all levels of government, but most especially from the federal level raises my blood pressure. The way the press is largely letting Bush and his cronies off the hook threatens to make my head explode.

Invaluable in keeping me up-to-date and pointing me to some of the good reporting out there, to other blogs and resources is John Aravosis and friends over at AmericaBlog. I can't recommend their blog enough.

Go.

Read.

Speaking Truth

I've been amazed at the number of times I've heard reporters asking some hard questions and not accepting the pat answers of those in power. It's not as often as it really should be, and some - most notably Michael Chertoff - have gotten away with the most blatant of lies. But perhaps the press is finding its voice; finding their collective cojones. Perhaps.

But more than even the press, I've been impressed with Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans. I don't know much else that the man has done prior to the disaster that's destroyed his city, but I know that he has been singularly disinclined to take any bullshit answers from other politicians when it comes to the rescue/relief efforts. From local and state officials all the way up to our so-called president, he's held no punches.

When Pelley suggests that bureaucracy might be the cause of the confusion, Nagin replies bluntly, "Bull-crap. When people are dying, bureaucracy should be thrown out of the water."

Asked if he thought people died because of the delays, Nagin says, "There is no doubt about it. I watched a guy jump from the Superdome yesterday, just couldn't take it anymore. We have two police officers that have committed suicide. They couldn't take it anymore. This is, this is hell. And to have this happen in the United States of America in the state of Louisiana, and to not have immediate, immediate response regardless of the laws, is tragic."

Nagin is someone to keep an eye on.

Impeach Bush Now!

I was going to write that Bush must fire Michael Chertoff for his incompetence and the constant stream of bald-faced lies he's been spouting on national TV for days.

But the whole crew must be held accountable.

Read the details of how BushCo. is making this disaster much worse than it ever had to be at AmericaBlog. But beware, your blood pressure will skyrocket...

Impeachment proceedings need to start now.

Give

I'm off to give blood this afternoon. After I look through my checkbook hopefully I'll have something in there to give as well.

Give. Give 'till it hurts:

Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW

Quagmire Part 2?

Seems that BushCo. just doesn't know how to respond to situations that require a military response. They didn't send enough troops or equipment to do the job they started in Iraq; now they've done the same thing in New Orleans. Had Shrubby boy cut short his vacation by just a couple of more days, he could have had emergency responders and more National Guard standing buy to help out the Gulf Coast. Instead he went to a couple of fund raisers and kept trying to sell his dead-in-the-water Social Security reform.

Now the streets of the Big Easy are nearly as dangerous as those in Baghdad - minus the suicide bombers - for now.

Last night the evacuation of the refugees from the Super Dome was suspended because some of the roving gangs of armed thugs who've been looting the city decided it would be fun to take pot-shots at the Chinook helicopters taking them out and to carjack the busses they were riding in. It's only today that armored National Guardsmen are making their way into the city. An inexcusable delay.

But we couldn't have Bush's vacation shortened by too much, now could we?

Post Script: In situations like this, police and National Guardsmen should only be required to issue one verbal warning to looters, carjackers and other armed, lawless thugs. Then they should be able to shoot them in the street like the animals they are.

Wishing Doesn't Make It So

One in a recent series of articles on the so-called Evolution - Creationism conflict in the NYT, this article really disturbs me. Here's the gist of it:

In a finding that is likely to intensify the debate over what to teach students about the origins of life, a poll released yesterday found that nearly two-thirds of Americans say that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in public schools.

The article goes on to detail how many of our deluded citizens think various things about creationism; all of which are too depressing to go into.

I've stayed mostly out of this "debate" because I get so angry that I can't be sure if I'll get my point across or, indeed, make any sense at all. But this most recent article has just been one too many. Here's my take: It doesn't matter what you want. There is no debate among real biologists: evolution is fact. None. Hell, I wish that Thermofluid Dynamics had been a little easier when I was in college; all of my classmates did. But that didn't make it so. In the same way, it doesn't matter to scientists what stupid people want or wish or believe. In science class, science should be taught. Not religion. And no matter how pretty a face the IDiots put on Intelligent Design or whatever the current euphemism is, it's still religion.

Period.

If we think that our schools are graduating a crop of morons now, just wait and see what happens to our technological standing in the world if these people have their way.

Now excuse me while I bang my head on my desk some more...

***********

To see what other people are saying about this, start with Steve at the Yellow Doggerel and also read several entries at Americablog. You can also search the NYT (registration required) archives for their previous articles.

BushCo Allergic to the Truth

Last week it was the Justice Department statistician who dared to tell the truth about the differential treatment of minorities received during traffic stops. This week it's a contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers who raised questions about non-competitive bids awarded to Halliburton subsidiary KBR in Iraq. From the NYT:

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

[snip]

Ms. Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an "obvious reprisal" for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in Iraq.

[snip

Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Ms. Greenhouse initially received stellar performance ratings, Mr. Kohn said. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown & Root, he said. Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.

The lesson should be clear to everyone now; do not, under any circumstances, bring this administration news that doesn't conform to its predetermined world-view. It's a good way to get your head handed to you...

What's On Your Bookshelf?

The FBI wants to know.

BushCo. has repeatedly stated that it has never used the section of the USA Patriot Act to peek at what Americans are reading. But we all knew it would only be a matter of time.

Using its expanded power under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, the F.B.I. is demanding library records from a Connecticut institution as part of an intelligence investigation, the American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday.

The demand is the first confirmed instance in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used the law in this way, federal officials and the A.C.L.U. said. The government's power to demand access to library borrowing records and other material showing reading habits has been the single most divisive issue in the debate over whether Congress should extend key elements of the act after this year.

Not only was this request made without judicial review, as allowed by the Patriot Act, the "institution" served with this request (we're not even allowed to know whether this is a library or a book store) is not allowed to tell anyone that it happened.

The best thing we can do, other than making sure to voice your displeasure with such unconstitutional intrusions into our freedom of speech, is to make sure that your book shelf contains at least one copy of everything on the FBI's trigger list. Of course that list is also classified, so we'll have to guess. I'm thinking things like "The Anarchist Cookbook," but I'm sure my readers can come up with others. Leave your recommedations for the "FBI's Most Wanted Reading List" in the comments. I'll make sure to publish the list in a future post.

Failure at the CIA?

A report this morning on MSNBC states that the CIA's inspector general has recommended that current and former high-ranking officials at the agency be disciplined for failures leading up to 9/11. There are some doubts about whether Director Porter Goss will follow through with the recommendation.

In this case, I have to agree with Goss.

Here's the problem - not only will such a disciplinary undertaking target officials once and still popular within the CIA and not only will it pull people away from important work - but wasn't it the CIA who produced a memo, ignored by its intended audience titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside the United States?"

I think there are others who should be disciplined...

Innocent in GITMO

Everyone in BushCo. involved in GITMO, no matter how tangentially are war criminals. If you have any doubt, read this article on MSNBC (from the Washington Post).

Although our supposedly-democratic government admits that the men in this story are innocent, they have refused to tell them so for months on end, have refused them legal counsel for years, and finally have just refused to let them go. This little bit of the story only hints at the criminality involved:

In the meantime, the men are still treated as prisoners. Sabin P. Willett, a Boston lawyer who volunteered to take the cases of two Uighurs in March, finally met with them last month, after he and his team went through their own FBI clearances. One of the Uighurs was "chained to the floor" in a "box with no windows," Willett said in an Aug. 1 court hearing.

"You're not talking about your client?" asked Judge James Robertson of the U.S. District Court in Washington.

"I'm talking about my client," Willett said.

"He was chained to a floor?" Robertson asked again.

"He had a leg shackle that was chained to a bolt in the floor," Willett replied.

Remember, BushCo. has admitted - in court - that these men are innocent.

This is what our country has become. This is what BushCo. has made of us. Despite the protestations of the right the last time the comparison was made, our country, the "beacon of democracy" in the world, is running its own gulag.

This is a crime. Morally and legally.

WWJD?

Pat Robertson, so-called Christian, has gone off the deep end.

Okay, I know this guy's been a nut-case for years; but a televangelist calling for the assassination of a foreign head of state? It will be very interesting to see how BushCo. and the rest of Robertson's audience of mouth-breathers will react.

Really, Pat... what would your invisible sky fairy do?

You Don't Speak For Me!

The thing I find most galling - in a long, long list - about the chicken-hawks and their supporters in this mis-administration is their predilection to put words in my mouth (and the mouths of other veterans and service members). Those who were just too busy to serve in the armed forces of our country or who served under mysterious circumstances (yeah, I'm talking to you, W), have no moral stand whatsoever to say what actions might "dishonor" service members or veterans. They have no right to declare that one action or another would make our sacrifices be "in vain."

As an ex-soldier and a veteran, I can tell you that nothing dishonors a soldier more than to waste his time or to risk his life or the lives of his buddies for no good reason. Nothing could be more in vain than to give up life or limb in the prosecution of a war sold to the American people as a lie.

Listen up, all of you who support this continuing disaster in Iraq, unless you've served, unless you're a veteran, you have no idea what you are talking about. You have no right to make claims on our honor. Keep your goddamn words out of our mouths; we can speak for ourselves.

You do not speak for me.

We All Have Questions

I haven't blogged about Cindy Sheehan since so many others are doing such a great job of it. But two events conspired to get me to write this post. Last night's candlelight vigils around the country in support of Cindy and an e-mail that I got earlier this week.

The vigils held all around the US and in several countries around the world have only increased the public and media focus on all of the false reasons we were given for invading Iraq and the resulting mayhem and deaths of our soldiers. You can read about them here. Finally, perhaps, the press and the country are waking up to what's really going on in Iraq; sometimes it takes something to hit you in the heart rather than in the head.

The second event that inspired this post had to do with a friend I mentioned in an earlier post who had been killed in Iraq; Colonel Ted Westhusing. On Monday, I received an e-mail from Ted's oldest brother thanking me for the kind words I'd written in the above post and in a letter that was published on Eric Alterman's Altercation blog on MSNBC.

This was a wonderful gesture on the part of Ted's brother. It was also a harsh reminder that despite the lack of real sacrifice asked of the rest of us, there are many among us, not just the Cindy Sheehans who get on TV, that have lost something in this neocon misadventure. So as the right-wing spin machine begins its knee-jerk sliming of everyone involved in the vigils and as the amnesiac media moves on to the "next big story," we should all remember and mourn with the mothers, fathers, spouses and children - and big brothers - who have lost a loved one in a war of choice and a war of lies.

Cindy Sheehan is just one reminder of this; a reminder, it appears, that this country sorely needs.

Tip-of-the-tongue-ism

Thanks to Michael at Musing's Musings, I now know that the word I was looking for in yesterday's post was "Panglossian". Here's what the Merriam-Webster has to say about that word:

Main Entry: Pan·gloss·ian
Pronunciation: pan-'glä-sE-&n, pa[ng]-, -'glo-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Pangloss, optimistic tutor in Voltaire's Candide (1759)
: marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds : excessively optimistic

It's no wonder I couldn't remember it, I hadn't read Candide since high school. Yet as soon as I saw the title I remembered it like it was yesterday. (Well, maybe more like the day before yesterday, it was nearly 30 years ago...)

And for a hint at a possible reason why BushCo's outlook remains so panglossian check out this post from Joseph's blog, Corpus Callosum.

It's no wonder these guys can't stop grinning like the cat that ate the bird...

It's On the Tip of My Tongue...

What do you call someone who, despite all evidence to the contrary, continues to see things in only the rosiest of light? I know there's a word for that affliction...

While Bush remained on a monthlong vacation at his Texas ranch, he issued a statement saying, “I applaud the heroic efforts of Iraqi negotiators and appreciate their work to resolve remaining issues through continued negotiation and dialogue. Their efforts are a tribute to democracy and an example that difficult problems can be solved peacefully through debate, negotiation and compromise.”

If only I could remember that word!

Anyone out there got an idea?

"Scaling Back Expectations"

Why does BushCo. want our soldiers' sacrifices to be for nothing?

Eric Alterman at Altercation points out this on MSNBC's site (from the Washington Post):

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society where the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

"Never realistic..." haven't we read that somewhere before?

"Shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning." Really? An unreality that so many of us warned of at various times from the beginning right through to yesterday?

And all that stuff in the first paragraph; right after Weapons of Mass Distraction, wasn't all of that BushCo's primary excuse for starting this whole damned thing?

If the media - and more importantly - the American public lets these idiots get away with all of this: thousands of lives lost, the creation of more terrorists and billions in our money wasted, I swear my head is going to blow up. And then, finally, I'll be moving to Canada.

And then you red-state, republican-voting, bible-thumpin', intelligent-design-believing morons can all go screw yourselves.

Apple Season

It's actually still much too early here in upstate New York for any kind of apples. But I'm typing this on the sweetest looking Apple ever. If you haven't seen the new iMac you're in for a sweet treat:

That's the whole computer. All of it except the keyboard and mouse. It comes with built in wireless networking, Bluetooth and a CD and DVD burning Superdrive. Of course the entire suite of Apple's digital lifestyle programs comes with it as well: iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand and lots of others. This means that, unlike most Windows machines, there's nothing else to buy to immediately begin creating amazing digital content. It's blazingly fast with a 2.0 GHz G5 processor and 1 GB of RAM. It was easy to set up and easy to work with and - like all Apples - beautifully designed.

The new operating system, OS X v10.4 is more beautiful than the machines it runs and makes Windows look and feel like an awkward kludge. It works. All the time, every time.

The combination is an absolute joy to work on.

Now I'll stop gloating.

Too Disgusted to Blog...

There's so much going on right now that disgusts me, worries me, angers me that I can't settle on a subject. So I thought I'd let someone else do the blogging for me. So here comes my first Liberal Coalition Blogabout in a long, long time...

Mustang Bobby at BBWW gets a little riled up over NARAL's ad taking probably future SCOTUS member John Roberts to task.

Over at Dohiyi Mir, NTodd's getting an early start on Friday Dog Blogging.

Liberty Street's Kathy decries the conditions in Baghdad - so bad that soon the entire professional class will have fled. To where is not clear, but who'll be running things when the last engineer heads for the hills?

Norbizness takes on Rumsfeld's September 11th March and Country Jamboree with his usual subtle and dry wit here.

Friday... Baby Blogging? Now Rivka at Respectful of Otters has gone too far, no?

And finally, Steve our resident Yellow Doggerel Democrat, tells it like it is about Cindy Sheehan's little camping adventure in Crawford, TX.

When you're done checking out these folks, doing the blogging so I don't have to, go through the rest of the blogs on the Liberal Coalition blogroll. You won't be disappointed. Honest.

Peter Jennings; Signing Off

Last night, succumbing to lung cancer, Peter Jennings died after a much too short fight.

You can read the details at ABC's site, but this was a guy who earned his news chops the hard way; despite an early appointment to the anchor desk. In the retrospective shown on ABC this morning, I recognized his reporting from all the major news events of my life. Most vividly, his was the calming voice and focused manner that I remember during the confusing and horrific days immediately after 9/11 in contrast to the shrill and sometimes ugly reporting at other networks.

It is a sad commentary on the times that the message boards at ABC are already being peppered with comments from people you just know were sent there by right-wing bloggers and followers of that "network which must not be named." They are repeating the lie of a liberal bias in the news while damning him for his idealism, his reporting and his Canadian background.

If you enjoyed his reporting or you care at all about common human decency, if you value the independent voices of the news networks, already mostly gone, leave your message of condolences to the ABC family and help to balance the shrill voices of the right.