My New Favorite Quote About Tom Delay

"Tom DeLay was like Tito in Yugoslavia," said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University. "He ruled with fear and also resources to reward people. Now without DeLay, the House will be balkanized."

Regaining a Little Faith In the System

Last November I was down in the dumps like every other democrat. I kept seeing all the corruption on the Republican side and I wondered if the legal system could withstand the republican asssault on the rule of law. Between Delay's K Street plan and TRMPAC and that lunatic Senator Cornyn threatening judges, I doubted the law could be enforced. But oh how things have changed in a very short time. Bill Frist is being investigated for insider trading worth between $2 and $6 million by the SEC. Tom Delay got indicted for criminal conspiracy. The guy in charge of purchasing for the US government, Savarian, got indicted last week. Jack Abramoff will be going to jail and is currently being investigated by 4 committees in congress. Half of the Republican party of Ohio will be going to jail for coingate. Duke Cunningham in California had to resign for bribes from defense contractors. Grover Nordquist and his organization is being investigated as well. But the biggest one will be Karl Rove in October. It will be great. People are finally figuring out that the Rethuglicans have a pay to play system. They shake down contributors in return for campaign donations and funnel it into slush funds to do dirty tricks and enrich themselves. The Republican Party is ideologically and morally bankrupt. It's ashame it took so much damage to the country for people to see it.

Interesting Statistics I Learned Today

Here are a couple interesting statistics I learned today on Slate. The first one is about health care:
As Figure 5 in the Census report shows, the regional uninsured rates break down as follows: South, 18.3 percent; West, 17.4 percent; Midwest, 11.9 percent; and Northeast, 13.2 percent. As this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report shows (see Figure 5 on Page 10), of the six states with the worst record on insuring the employed—Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Montana, and Oklahoma—four are big HCA states.

The other is about the prevailing wage law:
Republicans attack the law as a vestige of the New Deal; Democrats defend it for the same reason. Some wouldn't know what to do if they found out that the 1931 law was actually written by a three-time Republican Secretary of Labor and signed by Herbert Hoover in response to fears about immigrant wages during the Great Depression. So much for the last conservative war on poverty.

13 Most Corrupt Congressmen and Senators

We have here another reason for Tennessee to proud of very own native son Bill Frist. Between the pandering to the religious right with Terri Schiavo, murdering cats, insider trading, trying to block prisoner abuse investigations, and financially benefitting from your family owned hospitals doing abortions for profit (an amazing display of hypocrisy), I've come to the conclusion you are just a bad person. Yes, you can be a great heart surgeon and morally bankrupt human being. I betting a lot of other people have come to the same conclussion as well. I can take solace in the fact that you will never be President and your political career will be over soon.

Group Lists 13 'Most Corrupt' in Congress

By Chuck Neubauer, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — A watchdog group, naming what it calls "the 13 most corrupt members of Congress," is calling for ethics investigations of some of the most prominent leaders on Capitol Hill in a report to be released Monday.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington says in its report that the 13 members, among them Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), might have violated a variety of congressional ethics rules.

The bipartisan list includes three Californians: Reps. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe).

Cunningham is one of two House members whose residences have been searched as part of separate federal criminal investigations. The other, Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), also is named on the watchdog group's list.

Three of those named on the list — Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) — were cited for their dealings with onetime super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is the subject of congressional and federal grand jury investigations. Abramoff was indicted last month on fraud charges relating to a Florida business deal. He has pleaded not guilty.

"They all violated ethics rules," Melanie Sloan, the watchdog group's executive director, said of the 13 members of Congress on its list. She criticized both political parties for what she said was a failure to police ethics.

James Pendleton, a spokesman for Burns, dismissed the group's report as "pure politics." Ney's press secretary, Brian Walsh, said: "We don't give Melanie Sloan and her liberal organization an ounce of credibility."

Its report, titled "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress," is based on news articles and other documents, the watchdog group said. It made the report available to the Los Angeles Times.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington "was compelled to research and release a report on these corrupt members because the ethics committees in both the House and Senate are completely inert," Sloan said. "The report calls for the House and Senate to act to investigate and take appropriate action against them for these violations of the rules."

The watchdog group has been outspoken in criticizing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for what Sloan calls his ethical lapses.

"Nonetheless, we recognize that Rep. DeLay is not the only member of Congress whose behavior merits scrutiny," the report says. "There are a significant number of other members who have engaged in similarly egregious conduct, thus the name of the report: 'Beyond DeLay.' "

It says the group's goal is "to galvanize both the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct and the Senate Select Committee on Ethics into action. The ethics committees have lain largely dormant over the past years despite the often appalling conduct of their members."

Sloan expressed impatience with both parties. "Democrats are just as much to blame as Republicans for the current ethics deadlock. The Democrats won't file ethics complaints against even the most egregious violators like DeLay and Ney…. The Democrats are spineless," she said.

Sloan said she had been unable to persuade any member of the House to file ethics complaints that the watchdog group has drawn up against Ney and Cunningham. House rules do not permit outside groups to file complaints.

"It is outrageous that outsiders can't file complaints, since Congress has demonstrated its unwillingness to police its own conduct," Sloan said.

In 2004, Sloan helped then-Rep. Chris Bell (D-Texas), a lame duck, file a complaint against fellow-Texan DeLay. The House ethics committee admonished DeLay, but also said Bell had violated a House rule by filing a complaint containing "innuendo, speculative assertions or conclusory statements."

The Senate does permit outside complaints, but Sloan said they were routinely dismissed as "speculative."

Both ethics committees can initiate investigations on their own without a complaint. Such investigations tend to be confidential in the early stages.

A spokesman for the House ethics committee said he could not speak on any matter that may be pending before the committee. Rob Walker, chief counsel for the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, declined to comment.

The 13 members of Congress recommended for investigation by the watchdog group are:

• Sen. Bill Frist: The report accuses him of violating federal campaign finance laws in how he disclosed a campaign loan. It also calls for an inquiry over his recent sale of stock in HCA Inc., his family's hospital corporation. The sale has raised questions about possible insider dealing. Frist aides confirmed Friday that the SEC was investigating. They have denied claims of campaign finance violations.

• Rep. Roy Blunt: The report criticizes him for trying to insert provisions into bills that would have benefited, in one case, a client of his lobbyist son and in another case, the employer of his lobbyist girlfriend, now his wife.

• Sen. Conrad Burns: The report says that questions arose over $3 million in appropriations he earmarked for an Indian tribe in Michigan that was a client of lobbyist Abramoff. The senator received substantial campaign contributions from Abramoff and various clients.

"Sen. Burns did nothing wrong, and any accusation to the contrary is pure politics," said James Pendleton, his director of communications. He said Burns had earmarked the appropriation at the request of the Michigan congressional delegation.

• Rep. Bob Ney: The report says the chairman of the House Administration Committee went on a golf outing to Scotland in 2002, arranged by Abramoff, at a time when the congressman was trying to insert a provision into legislation to benefit one of Abramoff's tribal clients.

Ney reported to the House that the trip was paid for entirely by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, which denied paying any of the costs. Ney has said he had been duped by Abramoff.

• Rep. Tom Feeney: The report says he incorrectly reported that a golf trip to Scotland with Abramoff in 2003 was paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research, which denied it. A Feeney aide said the congressman had been misled. Questions also have arisen about two other privately funded trips.

• Rep. Richard W. Pombo: He paid his wife and brother $357,325 in campaign funds in the last four years, the report says. He also supported the wind-power industry before the Department of Interior without disclosing that his parents received hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties from wind-power turbines on their ranch.

Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Pombo, said that "each of the charges is baseless." He called the watchdog group "a Democratic attack group, and all of their charges should be taken with a grain of salt."

• Rep. Maxine Waters: The report cites a December 2004 Los Angeles Times investigation disclosing how members of the congresswoman's family have made more than $1 million in the last eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that Waters has helped. Before publication of the Times investigation last year, Waters declined to be interviewed, but said of her family members: "They do their business, and I do mine."

• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): The report says he encountered controversy over disclosures that Pennsylvania taxpayers paid for his children's schooling while they lived in Virginia. Santorum maintained he did nothing wrong, and has pulled his children out of the school, according to reports.

• Reps. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and William J. Jefferson: Both congressional veterans are under federal investigation.

Cunningham, who has announced that he will not run for reelection, faces questions over his dealings with a defense contractor who allegedly overpaid him when he purchased Cunningham's house. Jefferson is under scrutiny for his role in an overseas business deal. Normally the House ethics committee does not hold inquiries while criminal investigations are underway.

• Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.): The report says that questions have been raised about his private business interests, including a savings and loan in Asheville, N.C., and personal business interests in Russia.

• Rep. Marilyn N. Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.): Both second-term House members encountered criticisms tied to campaign activities, the report says.

Musgrave was accused of misusing her congressional office for campaign purposes. Renzi was accused of financing portions of his 2002 campaign with improper loans.

None Dare Call It Stolen

Here is a link to a Harper's story about the 2004 vote in Ohio.

http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptNoneDare.html

New Orleans Rebuild: Liberalism vs. Conservatism

Slate had a great article today about letting conservatives try their ideas on the rebuilding of New Orleans. I say bring it on. Let republicans try all their Heritage Foundation bull-shit ideas. I want to see Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, and Grover Nordquist 5 or 10 years from now explaining why New Orleans is a basketcase. But part of this question leads back to liberals. A lot of so called liberals are liberals because it's just the right thing to say. It is nice to talk about reducing poverty and giving people more healthcare. Yet, when you really start talking policy with these people they are corporatist. Republicans have pushed the political center so far to the right over the past 20 years that these so called liberals would have been republicans when Ford was President.
Liberalism would win in this fight. I've seen it work. Look at Western Europe and Canada. Low rates of poverty, low rates of crime, universal healthcare, lower levels of inequality, higher rates of entrepreneurship, better education systems, better oprotunities for social mobility, and fucking 6 week vacations! Jesus, they live longer and are even thinner than us. Plus, people have already looked at some the republicans hair-brained ideas. Here is what the Washington Post has to say:

The idea of spurring business activity in needy areas with tax incentives has been tried by both state and federal governments many times before, but economists who've looked at the record find no evidence that such schemes work. ... Moreover, Mr. Bush isn't just dusting off a failed policy tool. He's proposing a particularly bad version of it. Unlike many enterprise zones, the GO Zone offers tax breaks for investment but not for job creation.

2007 Memphis Mayor Race

The first shot was fired in the 2007 Memphis mayoral race this week. Congressman Harold Ford criticized the city’s disaster preparedness. Of course, Mayor Herenton got all pissy about it. I don’t think Herenton’s response was negative because of what was said. Who in their right mind believes this city is prepared for a major disaster. Come on, this city can’t even get an accurate idea of how bankrupt it actually is. What got Herenton’s panties in a wad was that Ford said it.

I have been begging for Ford to drop out of the Senate race because I think a stronger candidate would enter and win, but now I don’t think that will happen. As long as something extraordinary doesn’t happen, I think Coker and his $3 + million war chest will win. I believe Ford realizes this as well. But he may as well stay in the race to build for the future. Ford’s political future on the legislative side will be over. The plan to become a Senator and then get a shot at Vice Presidential Nomination is kaput. But by staying in the Senatorial race, he can build a public profile separate from his uncle’s. That will come in handy in 5 or 9 years from now when he runs for Governor. He will run for Governor after 1 or 2 terms as the successful Mayor of Memphis. This track may set him back a decade for his eventual VP nomination, but he’s young guy.

Ford will run for mayor for family reasons and personal ambition. The Herenton/Chism faction has the most influence on (control of) the Shelby County Democratic Party while the Ford faction has a small representation in it. If Ford leaves his congressional seat open, most likely a Chism backed candidate will win, especially with AC Wharton deciding not to run. In addition, Ophelia Ford is going to get challenged in District 29 in next year’s primary, most likely from Henri Brooks again. The Herenton/Chism faction has the opportunity of jumping from the Local to the State and Federal level, opening new streams of patronage. This would eclipse the Ford faction, setting up a big show down in 2007. Ford would have to run for his own political future but also for the continuation of his family’s political machine.
2007 could be the Clash of the Titans fight to the political death between the Herenton/Chism faction and the Ford faction. The faction that loses will be broken and a vacuum will be created. The victorious faction will then be in a position to fill that vacuum. Shelby County Democratic politics is a zero sum game and this fight has been in the making for several years. So get ready folks 2007 is going to be big and everyone will have to choose sides.

Katrina Cuts Iraq Support

A friend and I talked about this the first few days after Katrina. You could see it interviews with hurricane victims. So many of them said “Bush could send troops and billions of dollars to Iraq but couldn’t send help to Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi.” Now people are the connection that if relief efforts are this screwed in the United States, how bad must reconstruction and war be going in Iraq? The question for the Democratic Party is how much longer will it take for the Party to get behind the Feingold plan. His plan is the responsible and addresses withdrawal. If the party does not present an alternative to the American people, why would they decide to vote for democrats even if they don’t want republican’s.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. public support for President George W. Bush's Iraq policy has nosedived in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but this seems unlikely to force the administration to change tack, political analysts said on Wednesday.

A Gallup poll published on Monday found 66 percent of respondents favored the immediate withdrawal of some or all of the U.S. troops in Iraq, a 10 percentage point jump in two weeks.

Bush's personal approval on Iraq fell from 40 percent to 32 percent in the same period. In a CBS/New York Times poll the previous week, 75 percent said Bush had no clear plan for bringing U.S. troops home.

Rich Santorum Is My Muse

My favorite dipshit Senator is trying to save his political hide. It’s funny to see him trying to get the Bush albatross from around his neck. Too bad bitch, you are going to lose to Casey. Go back to the private sector you ferret faced, Frank Burns looking moron.
"Santorum takes Bush to task over Social Security strategy," reads today's headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Looking back on the last year, Santorum, R-Pa., said he had struggled to understand President Bush's decision to come out "right after the campaign" -- without allowing the 2004 presidential election fervor to cool -- "with this mandate that you're going to change the sacred cow of the [political] left, who've just been energized beyond belief.
"You've just defeated your opponent, and, you know, you take a 3-iron to the beehive," Santorum said. "You go out there and whack the beehive, and you wonder why all these bees are buzzing around your head. And not only do you whack the beehive, but then you don't do anything [more] for two months."

Bush Is in Bad Political Shape When the National Enquirer Starts Writing Booze Stories

Bush is seriously damaged goods. How long can republicans stay by him when the National Enquirer can run this story and not get crucified for slandering the President. He is politcal toast and we still have over three years of this ass clown. Here's the intor of the story.

BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS

By JENNIFER LUCE and DON GENTILE

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

Bush, who said he quit drinking the morning after his 40th birthday, has started boozing amid the Katrina catastrophe.

Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.

Memphis Gas Prices

Gas prices are going to spike badly by Friday or Saturday. 25% of all oil refining is done in the Houston/Galvaston area, also by tonnage it is the largest port in the United States. The refineries have been picking up some of the slack of the reduced production from the New Orleans area. If a category 4 or 5 hurricane hits there than production will be disrupted. You may see $4 to $5 a gallon gas and shortages here in the Southeast.

How Much Do We Spend in Iraq & Afghanistan

How much does the US military spend on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Apparently, no one knows. Here is what the General Accounting Office says about Pentagon accounting.
"Neither DOD nor Congress can reliably know how much the war is costing and details of how appropriated funds are being spent."
It's just a guesstimate that we spend $5 to 6 billion a month in Iraq, but chances are not likely we are spending less.

The School Buses in New Orleans

The 2000 school buses myth had been a talking point of republicans a little over week ago. This past week, acurate information about the schools buses became known. The city of New Oleans owns 254 schools buses.
But the bus story doesn't end there. Here is a story out of Baton Rouge about what FEMA told the Governor.
Here's the link.
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/091805/new_blanco001.shtml

Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes.

On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview.

Even after levees broke and residents were crowding the Louisiana Superdome, then-FEMA Director Mike Brown was bent on using his own buses to evacuate New Orleans, Blanco said.

The state had sent 68 school buses into the city on Monday.

Blanco took over more buses from Louisiana school systems and sent them in on Wednesday, two days after the storm. She tapped the National Guard to drive them. Each time the buses emptied an area, more people would appear, she said.

The buses took 15,728 people to safety, a Blanco aide said. But the state's fleet of school buses wasn't enough. On Wednesday, with the FEMA buses still not in sight, Blanco called the White House to talk to Bush and ended up speaking to Chief of Staff Andy Card.

"I said, 'Even if we had 500 buses, they've underestimated the magnitude of this situation, and I think I need 5,000 buses, not 500,'" Blanco recounted.


The rest of the story is stunning as well.

Krugman Sees the Corruption Coming

September 16, 2005
Not the New Deal
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Now it begins: America's biggest relief and recovery program since the New Deal. And the omens aren't good.

It's a given that the Bush administration, which tried to turn Iraq into a laboratory for conservative economic policies, will try the same thing on the Gulf Coast. The Heritage Foundation, which has surely been helping Karl Rove develop the administration's recovery plan, has already published a manifesto on post-Katrina policy. It calls for waivers on environmental rules, the elimination of capital gains taxes and the private ownership of public school buildings in the disaster areas. And if any of the people killed by Katrina, most of them poor, had a net worth of more than $1.5 million, Heritage wants to exempt their heirs from the estate tax.

Still, even conservatives admit that deregulation, tax cuts and privatization won't be enough. Recovery will require a lot of federal spending. And aside from the effect on the deficit - we're about to see the spectacle of tax cuts in the face of both a war and a huge reconstruction effort - this raises another question: how can discretionary government spending take place on that scale without creating equally large-scale corruption?

It's possible to spend large sums honestly, as Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated in the 1930's. F.D.R. presided over a huge expansion of federal spending, including a lot of discretionary spending by the Works Progress Administration. Yet the image of public relief, widely regarded as corrupt before the New Deal, actually improved markedly.

How did that happen? The answer is that the New Deal made almost a fetish out of policing its own programs against potential corruption. In particular, F.D.R. created a powerful "division of progress investigation" to look into complaints of malfeasance in the W.P.A. That division proved so effective that a later Congressional investigation couldn't find a single serious irregularity it had missed.

This commitment to honest government wasn't a sign of Roosevelt's personal virtue; it reflected a political imperative. F.D.R.'s mission in office was to show that government activism works. To maintain that mission's credibility, he needed to keep his administration's record clean.

But George W. Bush isn't F.D.R. Indeed, in crucial respects he's the anti-F.D.R.

President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government, rather than as a reason to reconsider their faith in Mr. Bush.

And to date the Bush administration, which has no stake in showing that good government is possible, has been averse to investigating itself. On the contrary, it has consistently stonewalled corruption investigations and punished its own investigators if they try to do their jobs.

That's why Mr. Bush's promise last night that he will have "a team of inspectors general reviewing all expenditures" rings hollow. Whoever these inspectors general are, they'll be mindful of the fate of Bunnatine Greenhouse, a highly regarded auditor at the Army Corps of Engineers who suddenly got poor performance reviews after she raised questions about Halliburton's contracts in Iraq. She was demoted late last month.

Turning the funds over to state and local governments isn't the answer, either. F.D.R. actually made a point of taking control away from local politicians; then as now, patronage played a big role in local politics.

And our sympathy for the people of Mississippi and Louisiana shouldn't blind us to the realities of their states' political cultures. Last year the newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter ranked the states according to the number of federal public-corruption convictions per capita. Mississippi came in first, and Louisiana came in third.

Is there any way Mr. Bush could ensure an honest recovery program? Yes - he could insulate decisions about reconstruction spending from politics by placing them in the hands of an autonomous agency headed by a political independent, or, if no such person can be found, a Democrat (as a sign of good faith).

He didn't do that last night, and probably won't. There's every reason to believe the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, like the failed reconstruction of Iraq, will be deeply marred by cronyism and corruption.

Who Wrote the President's Speech

Here is a Heritage Foundation policy paper on rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/GovernmentReform/wm835.cfm

Here are some highlights (or low lights)
"Private vision, not bureaucracy, must be the engine to rebuild. New Orleans and other ravaged cities will look different in a decade from now, even though they will retain their individual essences. The critical need now is to encourage investors and entrepreneurs to seek new opportunities within these cities. Bureaucrats cannot do that. The key is to encourage private sector creativity, such as declaring New Orleans and other severely damaged areas “Opportunity Zones” in which capital gains tax on investments is eliminated and regulations simplified or eliminated."
These have worked so well to reduce poverty in the cities they have instituted. Memphis, Newark, Detroit. Not! Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary, said no businessman worth his salt bases his business plan on marginal tax rates.

Repeal or waive Clean Air Act regulations that hamper refinery construction or expansion.

Allow more drilling in the United States, including in ANWR and offshore areas along other coasts

Waive or repeal gasoline formulation requirements under the Clean Air Act and other regulations to allow gasoline markets to work more flexibly and efficiently and reduce costs.
This looks like a wish list of anti-environmental legislation. It's interesting republican wanted to do this before Katrina.

Repeal the death tax, or at the very least exempt Katrina victims from paying death taxes. After 9/11, Congress enacted legislation to increase the exempt amount for families of victims to $8.5 million and delayed their death tax liability for two years.
Let me get this shit straight. We should exempt the estate tax, which only affects a few very rich people, but nothing should be done about the draconian bankruptcy bill.
This is the same thinking which caused the manmade part of the disaster. Government can't do anything, so it should be used for cronyism and helping republican constituents, i.e. rich corporations and people, get richer at the cost of the greater good. Wake up sheeple, it class warfare and if your not rich than you are losing. If Bush was serious about rebuilding New Orleans, he wouldn't put Turd Blossom in charge of it.

What the Fuck

Bush is putting a traitor in charge of $200 billion. Graft, corruption, and cronyism will just run amuck.

"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, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Bush Poll Numbers and the Supreme Court

This week's Wall Street Journal/ NBC poll
Iraq:
Approve: 37%
Disapprove: 58%


Troop Level:
Maintain: 36%
Reduce: 55%

75% say the US is not prepared for a WMD attack

How people think the reconstruction after Katrina should be primarily funded:


Reduced Iraq spending: 45%
Repeal tax cuts: 27%
Cut federal spending: 12%
Increase the Deficit: 8%
Raise income taxes: 7%

Bush overall approval rating 40%

With numbers like these Bush will have to pick an ultra conservative to fill O'Connor's spot on the Supreme Court. Bush will take on the political battle even though it will alienate independents. A battle will galvanize his conservative support, which may have been starting to fray after Plamegate, high gas prices, and Katrina. Pat Buchanan said it this weekend. If Bush picks a moderate he's dead. A moderate would shatter his base. (38% is about as low as Bush will go unless there are pictures of him drowning puppies with his bare hands.) A moderate Supreme Court nominee will not help him much with independent voters because they have already lost faith in Bush. If he shatters his base this year, republicans have no chance in the congressional elections and Bush presidency will be gripped by rigamortis. Plus, democrats would begin countless investigations of corruption and incompetency by the administration. So politics will be centered over the next year on appeasing that base 38% at the cost of the other 62%. Say good bye to even the rhetoric of "compassionate conservatism" and hello to lunatics like Senator Cornyn and Corburn. and Congressman Sensenbrenner.

Steve Cohen and Commercial Appeal Union

About two weeks ago, an AFL-CIO organizer asked State Senator Steve Cohen to add his name to an advertisement. The advertisement was to be taken out in the Commercial Appeal and the Memphis Flyer. It listed the supporters of the union which was in a labor dispute with the Commercial Appeal. Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman, Matt Kuhn, signed on with his support. State Senator Beverly Marrero signed on as well. In fact, Senator Marrero didn't even read it. She told the organizer she was 100% behind labor and she didn't need to read it. When the organizer asked Senator Cohen, Cohen said he was to busy to talk about it. Then, the organizer said he could just fax the letter of support to the Senator's office. The Senator could read it at his leisure and fax it back. Cohen responded "I have neither the time nor the inclination to get involved." Needless to say the organizer was stunned by this response and he isn't the only one. I am normally in agreement with Senator Cohen's political positions 98% of the time, but to say that to a union organizer is mind boggling. Before people jump to conclusions, it would be good to hear why Senator Cohen took this position. I hope he hasn’t decided that he is no longer inclined to support the labor movement in general.

Updated Katrina Timeline

This is an updated Katrina Timeline.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/katrina-timeline.php

Dick Cheney Was Shown Proper Respect Today

Last week Dick Cheney was busy shooting animals and attending fund raisers in Wyoming. This weekend, he was looking at the $2.9 million estate on the Cheasapeake Bay. Today he finally visited the disaster zone, and he got an earful.
From Dailykos:
In Mississippi, during a press conference, after telling the press that what needs to be done, gets done. A resident walked up to the gaggle and said this:
"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney!! Go fuck yourself!!!
Cheney looked pissed. Really pissed.
A reporter then asked him, "Do you get that a lot, Mr. Cheney?"
He replied, "That's the first time I've heard it. Must be a friend of John er.. uh.. never mind."

The Bush Administration Are Just Bald-Face Liars

The Administrations argument about no one expecting this type of disaster in New Orleans is shown for the lie it is.

From the St. Petersburgh Times:
Just last year, FEMA hired a private company, IEM Inc. of Baton Rouge, to help conduct an eight-day drill for a fictional Category 5 hurricane in New Orleans named Pam. It included staging a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, a prediction of 15 feet of water in parts of the city and the evacuation of 1-million people.
But the second part of the company's work - to design a plan to fix unresolved problems, such as evacuating sick and injured people and housing thousands of stranded residents - never occurred because the funding was cut.

Democrats Speak Up

It looks like the democrats, even Establishment and DLC'ers, have started to get a backbone.

Refering to Bush about not firing FEMA director Brown. "Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous,"
"Americans should now harbor no illusions about the government's ability to respond effectively to disasters," "Our vulnerabilities were laid bare." Nancy Pelosi

"It's a summary of all that this administration is not in touch with and has faked and ducked and bobbed over the past four years. What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology." John Kerry

"Our government failed at one of the most basic functions it has - providing for the physical safety of our citizens," Evan Bayh

"The Democratic Party needs a new direction," he said. "And I think it's become clear what the direction is: restore a moral purpose to America. Rebuild America's psyche." "This is deeply disturbing to a lot of Americans, because it's more than thousands of people who get killed; it's about the destruction of the American community," "The idea that somehow government didn't care until it had to for political reasons. It's appalling." Howard Dean

Incompassionate Conservatism

The Demise of Compassionate Conservatism
Bush finds himself up a creek without a political philosophy.
By Bruce Reed
Updated Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005, at 2:21 AM PT


We Have a Loser: Earlier this week, neo-con Bill Kristol told the Washington Post that almost every Republican he had spoken to was disappointed in Bush's performance. By evoking broad disdain for the administration's response from Republicans and Democrats alike, Bush has finally kept his promise to be a uniter, not a divider.

Usually, the blame game is a loser for both parties. However, when Republicans and Democrats can make common cause against a common enemy, like the federal government or hapless FEMA Director Michael Brown, there is more than enough blame game to go around.

Among the many illusions that washed away over the past week is one that was particularly precious to Bush: the long-lost and perhaps now never-to-be-seen-again political philosophy of compassionate conservatism.

For close political observers, this is hardly news. As a movement, compassionate conservatism always seemed like a leap of faith by an awfully small group of true believers, such as Bush's longtime speechwriter Michael Gerson and his first choice to head the faith-based initiative, Prof. John DiIulio.

DiIulio quit in late 2002, telling Esquire that the Bush White House cared only about politics, not policy. "There is a virtual absence as yet of any policy accomplishments that might, to a fair-minded non-partisan, count as the flesh on the bones of so-called compassionate conservatism," he said. Gerson still believes, but now he's stuck working on domestic policy for a White House that tries not to have one.

As an agenda, compassionate conservatism died by Bush's own hand in May 2001, when the president called for a new war on poverty the same week he threatened the Senate he would veto anything less than his full tax cut. If LBJ's war on poverty came to an unsatisfactory, Vietnam-like conclusion, Bush's war on poverty was a Bay of Pigs fiasco: Poverty won, the battle was lost before most knew it had started, and many Republicans swore to themselves they'd never get involved in an endeavor like that again.

No Child Left Behind – the aspect of compassionate conservatism about which Bush seemed to care most sincerely – has run smack into the same force that has bedeviled him on Katrina: his administration's own bureaucratic incompetence. The rest of Bush's innovative (if woefully underfunded) campaign agenda had all the hallmarks of a governor and gave way to a Republican Congress that quickly ditched compassionate conservatism in favor of what Jacob Weisberg calls interest-group conservatism. Moral leadership that was supposed to come from Gerson and DiIulio came instead from the likes of Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed, who didn't even feel compassion for clients paying them millions of dollars.

Brain-Dead Politics: Still, the Bush White House defiantly kept compassionate conservatism on life support, even though its best days were behind it. Bush's can't-do list grew longer—no faith-based bill; no welfare reform bill; no tax cuts for charity—but the speeches kept coming.

Why keep the faith? Because for Bush and his political team, compassionate conservatism was never primarily about a policy agenda. First and foremost, it was a political project. Just as Peggy Noonan had coined "a kinder, gentler nation" to inoculate Bush's father against the dark side of Reaganism, Karl Rove and company used Gerson's doctrine of compassionate conservatism to imply that George W. Bush wouldn't be another Gingrich Republican.

As a short-term political project, it worked famously. Bush's 2000 convention speech was a triumph. During that campaign, Bush gave the appearance of softening conservatism's hard edges by criticizing House Republicans for trying to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit. Never mind that at the same time, he was making any compassion agenda impossible by giving trillions to those who didn't need it.

As a governing philosophy, however, it was a disaster—too much faith, not enough works. Bill Clinton had it pegged back in 1999, when he said:

This compassionate conservatism has a great ring to it, you know. It sounds sooo good. And near as I can tell, here's what it means: It means, "I like you. I do. And I would like to be for the patients' bill of rights, and I'd like to be for closing the gun show loophole, and I'd like not to squander the surplus and, you know, save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation. I'd like to raise the minimum wage. I'd like to do these things. But I just can't. And I feel terrible about it."

We're too close to the Katrina disaster to understand its lasting impact on the American psyche. America's initial response to Sept. 11 held out hope of more unity and less division, but soon, politics as usual returned with a vengeance. The undelivered promise of a kinder, gentler conservatism has endured almost 20 years despite a mountain of meaner, harsher evidence to the contrary. Moreover, despite high hopes that a stronger role for government will be back by popular demand, Democrats still have to earn that support with a compelling vision of what government can and cannot do and how America can do better.

Nonetheless, I remember how much the first President Bush suffered from the 1992 riots in South Central LA, as it dawned on people that his administration had no answers to the nation's festering problems. For a man whose vision was "a kinder, gentler nation," all the moral high ground was suddenly underwater.

With so much to grieve about these days, no one will mourn the passing of another hollow slogan. We can only hope that Republicans jockeying for their party's nomination next time around will take the demise of compassionate conservatism to heart and see it as a failure not just of competence, but of ideology.

Republican's In Congress Are Just Bad People

From Today's Washington Post:
House and Senate lawmakers said they will proceed with a package of $70 billion in tax cuts and $35 billion in entitlement spending cuts, including as much as $10 billion out of a Medicaid program they simultaneously were suggesting expanding.

Before Katrina struck, the House and Senate were at loggerheads over an energy and water spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in October, with the Senate hoping to spend $700 million more than the House on water projects, including $27 million more on flood control in southeastern Louisiana and $20 million more on Louisiana coastal protection. House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield said the committee has received no instructions to budge: "We are committed to living within our budget."

$70 Billion in tax cut and $35 in entitlement cuts?!?!? So the republicans just want to continue to give to the rich and screw the poor. How many more people are going to need government assistance after this disaster? Then they still don't want to spend chump change on water projects. Jesus, $20 million to Louisiana. That's nothing. I will return to my argument. If you don't think the government can do anything right, than you have no problem creating a kleptocracy and reducing government competence.

National Shame

The Larger Shame
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The wretchedness coming across our television screens from Louisiana has illuminated the way children sometimes pay with their lives, even in America, for being born to poor families.

It has also underscored the Bush administration's ongoing reluctance or ineptitude in helping the poorest Americans. The scenes in New Orleans reminded me of the suffering I saw after a similar storm killed 130,000 people in Bangladesh in 1991 - except that Bangladesh's government showed more urgency in trying to save its most vulnerable citizens.

But Hurricane Katrina also underscores a much larger problem: the growing number of Americans trapped in a never-ending cyclone of poverty. And while it may be too early to apportion blame definitively for the mishandling of the hurricane, even President Bush's own administration acknowledges that America's poverty is worsening on his watch.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush.

If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.

Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India.

The national infant mortality rate has risen under Mr. Bush for the first time since 1958. The U.S. ranks 43rd in the world in infant mortality, according to the C.I.A.'s World Factbook; if we could reach the level of Singapore, ranked No. 1, we would save 18,900 children's lives each year.

So in some ways the poor children evacuated from New Orleans are the lucky ones because they may now get checkups and vaccinations. But nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. The U.S. ranks 84th in the world for measles immunizations and 89th for polio.

One of the most dispiriting elements of the catastrophe in New Orleans was the looting. I covered the 1995 earthquake that leveled much of Kobe, Japan, killing 5,500, and for days I searched there for any sign of criminal behavior. Finally I found a resident who had seen three men steal food. I asked him whether he was embarrassed that Japanese would engage in such thuggery.

"No, you misunderstand," he said firmly. "These looters weren't Japanese. They were foreigners."

The reasons for this are complex and partly cultural, but one reason is that Japan has tried hard to stitch all Japanese together into the nation's social fabric. In contrast, the U.S. - particularly under the Bush administration - has systematically cut people out of the social fabric by redistributing wealth from the most vulnerable Americans to the most affluent.

It's not just that funds may have gone to Iraq rather than to the levees in New Orleans; it's also that money went to tax cuts for the wealthiest rather than vaccinations for children.

None of this is to suggest that there are easy solutions for American poverty. As Ronald Reagan once said, "We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won." But we don't need to be that pessimistic - in the late 1990's, we made real headway. A ray of hope is beautifully presented in one of the best books every written on American poverty, "American Dream," by my Times colleague Jason DeParle.

So the best monument to the catastrophe in New Orleans would be a serious national effort to address the poverty that afflicts the entire country. And in our shock and guilt, that might be politically feasible. Rich Lowry of The National Review, in defending Mr. Bush, offered an excellent suggestion: "a grand right-left bargain that includes greater attention to out-of-wedlock births from the Left in exchange for the Right's support for more urban spending." That would be the best legacy possible for Katrina.

Otherwise, long after the horrors have left TV screens, about 50 of the 77 babies who die each day, on average, will die needlessly, because of poverty. That's the larger hurricane of poverty that shames our land.

Keith Olbermann Destroys Bush's Spin

Keith Olbermann skewered Bush and his criminally incompetent administration. He is the Olbermann's editorial from his news show.

SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."
Well there's your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.

And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.

But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?

I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — "New Orleans."

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have forseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

Krugman Is Right on Target

Krugman hits on what the logical result of anit-government philosophy leads too. If you think the government can't do anything correct and is root of all problems, than you may as well put your cronies in government and create a kleptocracy. Which leads to a point of systematic corruption in republican administrations. In the 20th century, what administration had the most officals sent to jail. Answer- The Harding administration. What administration had the second most: Answer- The Reagan administration. Followed by the Nixon administration. Now think about the current Bush administration and republican party. In congress, you Tom Delay's K-Street project which its goal is to get lobbying firms to hire only republicans and then steer all contributions to republican members of congress. Result- there are twice as many lobbyists in Washington to bribe government officials than there was 5 years ago. The Congress refuses to investigate the $8.8 billion dollars missing during the Coalition Provsional Authority's year long rule of Iraq. Or how about Halliburton contracts and rewritten government envirnomental regulations by corporate lobbyists. the list goes on and on. The republicans have corruption scandals right now in the city of San Diego, the entire Ohio state government and the Kentucky state government. Republican scandals have taken place in Montana allowing a democratic governor to be elected. Arnold Schwarznegger in California is now seen as corrupt. Republican congressmen with corruption scandals include Duke Cunningham, Tom Noe, David Dreier, the Speaker of the House Denny Hastert, and of course Tom Delay. Then you have entire states that are perceived as having corrupt republican machines, most notably Florida and Texas, but let's not forget Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Hell, look what republicans did to the finances of Shelby County. This is what republicanism means, the undermining the competency of the public sector in order to enrich those with power and connections. Welcome to the third world.

But in case people don't believe what I am saying. Lets look at the fundamental argument of republican's that says the government is too big.
Federal government employment:
1945- 3.4 million
1947- 2 million
1951- 2.5 million
1987- 3.1 million
1997- 2.8 million
Today- the largest expansion of the federal government since WWII and apparently for nothing in return, i.e Hurricane Katrina.

State and Local government:
1946- 3.6 million
1980- 13.3 million
1997- 16.7 million

So the Era of Big Government was first in states and local communities and now has caught on with the Bush Administration at the federal level. Wasn't returning decisions and authority to the states the republicans' main focus. Well, surprise surprise, local and state constituents wanted more services and caused the expansion of government. So lets clarify, do republicans want to end the era of Big local and state government while just pillaging the federal for their own benefit. It seems that they are happy to pillage state and local governments as well. Now I know why they hate paying taxes. It is a lot of trouble to try to steal your won money back while stealing everyone else's as well. And It all stems from this.


From Krugman's NYT editorial:
But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

Does anyone remember the fight over federalizing airport security? Even after 9/11, the administration and conservative members of Congress tried to keep airport security in the hands of private companies. They were more worried about adding federal employees than about closing a deadly hole in national security.

Of course, the attempt to keep airport security private wasn't just about philosophy; it was also an attempt to protect private interests. But that's not really a contradiction. Ideological cynicism about government easily morphs into a readiness to treat government spending as a way to reward your friends. After all, if you don't believe government can do any good, why not?

Hurricane Katrina Timeline

So people don't forget or get politically spinned by the what happened this week. Here is a timeline from Dailykos.

Bush's Disastrous Response: A Timeline.
by Rp [Subscribe]
Sun Sep 4th, 2005 at 08:10:17 PDT
I've put this timeline together to try and come to grips with what just happened this last week in America. None of this is news to dKos readers but compiling it into a timeline starting from when Katrina made landfall in South Florida to the aftermath along the Gulf Coast helped me to process exactly what Bush and his government was and was not doing as the situation worsened.

I'm sure there are events and details I've missed so I thought I'd open it up for peer review to make sure I got it right for posterity.

Rp's diary :: ::
Thursday Aug. 25, Day 1 - Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in southern Florida. Bush is at his ranch in Crawford, Texas and defends his habit of taking lengthy vacations.

"I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy, and part of my being is to be outside exercising. So I'm mindful of what goes on around me. On the other hand, I'm also mindful that I've got a life to live, and will do so."

Later, White House spokesperson David Almacy denies Bush is on vacation claiming the reason that Bush is in Crawford is "due to the renovation of the West Wing of the White House."

Friday Aug. 26, Day 2 - Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, commander, Joint Task Force Katrina, acknowledges in Special Defense Department Briefing that a request from the state governors in Louisiana, Mississippi was requested a week earlier Friday Aug. 19.


Q General, Jamie McIntyre from CNN. To what extent is this additional assistance you've outlined today a response to a request from the state governors in Louisiana, Mississippi? And if so, can you tell us when specifically you got that request?

GEN. HONORÉ: Yes, sir. The process starts, sir, in this particular event, with a request Friday of last week, as the approximate date for defense coordinating offices to be established in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Those were established in those states over Friday and Saturday.

Bush is still not on vacation in Crawford where he is living his life.

Sat. Aug. 27, Day 3 - Katrina, the sixth deadliest hurricane to hit Florida in a year, moves westwards toward the Gulf Coast at nearly 7mph (11kph). Forecasters said the hurricane, expected to make landfall on Monday, could hit anywhere from Florida to Louisiana. Bush remained on the grounds of his ranch behind a security perimeter and made his case for the Iraq occupation in his Saturday radio address

Sun. Aug. 28, Day 4 - LA Gov. Kathleen Blanco requests (pdf) Bush declare an expedited major disaster for the state.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an immediate mandatory evacuation for all of New Orleans.

From his Texas ranch where he was not on vacation Bush warned, "We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities. We will do everything in our power to help the people and the communities affected by this storm."

Later, Bush pressed for an emergency declaration in Alabama, which would allow federal operations in. Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi were already declared disaster states.

"These declarations will allow federal agencies to coordinate all disaster relief efforts with state and local officials," Bush said.

Mon. Aug. 29, Day 5 - Hurricane Katrina comes ashore just east of Grand Isle, Louisiana, at 6:30 a.m. ET. About a hundred miles to the north, New Orleans is said to be 80 percent evacuated, with the potential for historic damage. Evacuations were also ordered in Alabama and Mississippi.

Bush was briefed by Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on hurricane preparedness then headed to Arizona for a speech on Medicare. Bush weighed a decision on whether to release oil from the nation's petroleum reserves as the price of light sweet crude rose more than $70. No decision was made.

The White House did announce new low-cost options under the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit that will be available beginning in January 2006. According to a White House press release on Aug. 29, "This is great news for people with Medicare. They will be able to choose prescription drug plans costing $20 a month, or even less, while still getting medically necessary treatments and prescriptions at convenient pharmacies."

Tue. Aug. 30, Day 6 - Water pours into New Orleans a full day after the hurricane hit. Breached levees submerged 80 percent of the city in water from Lake. There is no power. There is no fresh water or sewage systems.

"The situation is untenable," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said. "It's just heartbreaking."

Mayor Ray Nagin lashes out at federal officials, telling WWL radio "they don't have a clue what's going on down here."

Bush visits Naval Base Coronado in California, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, answered growing anti-war protests with a fresh reasons for American troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields that he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

Afterwards he was presented with a guitar bearing the Presidential seal by Country Singer Mark Wills backstage following his visit. Bush decides to cut short the vacation he was not on and return to Washington to focus on the storm damage. He comes back the next day.

Wed. Aug. 31, Day 7 - Bush flies back to Washington DC and holds a press conference from the White House Rose Garden during which he said he had been updated on the disaster from Secretary Chertoff and other Cabinet Secretaries.

"As we flew here today, I also asked the pilot to fly over the Gulf Coast region so I could see firsthand the scope and magnitude of the devastation."

In New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said, "We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water, and others dead in attics," during an impromptu news conference at the Hyatt Hotel. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

About 15,000 to 20,000 people were in the Superdome, which had become hot and stuffy, with broken toilets and nowhere for anyone to bathe. Mayor Nagin estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people remained in New Orleans.

Army engineers struggle to plug New Orleans' breached levees with giant sandbags and concrete barriers.

Thurs. Sept. 1, Day 8 - "The president's statement this afternoon set the tone. Rather than direct the U.S. military to immediately assist the thousands of people without food or water in the city center, Bush assured the nation that expected gasoline shortages would be temporary and that his father and former President Clinton were ready to pass the tin can to ensure private-sector support for rebuilding New Orleans. As people began dying around the Convention Center, and Mayor Ray Nagin resorted to issuing a pathetic SOS over CNN, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff spoke empathetically of the suffering of the people in New Orleans. But somehow he seemed proud that 72 hours after the hurricane hit, only 2,800 National Guardsmen had come to the city. The number is about to reach 12,000 by tomorrow."

Secretary of State Condoleezza gets busted shopping for shoes and is shamed by New Yorker who reportedly said, "How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!"

Vice President Dick Cheney is still on vacation in Wyoming.

Congress quickly passes a $10.5 billion disaster aid package.

Friday. Sept. 2, Day 9 - Five days after Katrina makes landfall on the Gulf Coast "The Calvary Arrives." National Guard relief convoy rolls into the Crescent City with Bush leading the charge.

Bush visits Gulf for photo op. "We're going to make it right," he said. Bush said he would sign the $10.5 billion disaster aid package by day's end.

Sat. Sept. 3, Day 10 - Refugees are bused and airlifted out of New Orleans. Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast. No one is yet certain how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways. And the dying continued -- at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) reports that levee repairs during a Bush's photo-op the day before were faked and stopped soon after he left. "...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," Landrieu said.

"In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need," President Bush said.

What I Hear in Memphis Disturbs Me

I work in a restaurant downtown. 90% of my co-workers are black and we have had CNN on the TV during work. We have all been shocked and enraged at what has and, as of writing this entry, is still happening in New Orleans. The clientele of the restaurant is overwhelmingly white and upper-middle class. I have almost gotten into fights with customers because of things I have heard them say and what they have actually said to me. On Friday, a business woman was watching the TV. She heard the complaints I and another worker had of the relief effect. She turned to us and argued most of the blame should be on the people who stayed in New Orleans. My co-worker and I were shocked. We tried as nicely as possible to explain that these people couldn't leave. I even explained to her that FEMA ran test scenarios two years ago that said if New Orleans had to evacuated an estimated 100,000 people would not be able to leave the city. She just didn't grasp it. She was incapable of empathizing with people different from herself in extremely difficult situations. Why couldn't they just pack up the Suburban and leave town like everyone else. My co-worker and I just turned our backs to her and walked off.
Today, I was even more shocked at what I heard. Four, fat, middle-aged crackers dressed in camoflage were just back from duck hunting. (I think I have figured out why white males love guns so much. Small dicks and impotenece. They need big guns to go kill animals, not for food, but for sexual satisfaction. I think in some strange way golf gives sexually satisfaction for these guys as well. Pathetic.) Well these fat fucks, who look like sitting in a blind on a lake, calling their prey with some screwed up kazoo, was about the limit of their physical exertion for the thrill of the hunt, start talking racist shit hidden as a call for personal responsibility. I quote "those people have been living off the government so long they just expect it to do everything for them." refering to all the black people stranded in New Orleans. Then they stated how New Orleans doesn't need to be rebuilt. They finished off their insightful comments with the now standard, white, suburban, republican, Bush-apologist statement of "they should have evacuated when they were told."
Well fuck them. These crackers live in their cultural dead zone of suburbia, playing out such meaningless existences that their emotional fix is blasting the heads off animals. These are the same people who "support our troops" by putting chinese made stickers of American flags on their SUV's while gladly accepting tax breaks and not having their own children enlist. These are the same people who mercilessly judge those trying to survive in a flooded city ravaged by a hurricane for days with no food or water, yet get in fights at the gas station trying to buy fuel before it goes up $.10 a gallon. These are the people that have rationalized social darwinism's cult of greed and disregard for their fellow man into virtues. People are simply poor because they are lazy or God thinks they are just bad people. These are the people who have gotten their's by standing on the shoulders of others but have somehow convinced themselves they've climbed Mt. Everest with one hundred pounds of rocks on their backs. I'm sure when bad times come, they will fully understand it was of their own making and refuse help of the government, whether it be unemployment checks when the recession comes, FEMA assistance if the big earthquake ever hits, or the CDC medical help when avian bird flu starts killing people of all classes and races. All of these things could be your own fault. YOU don't have skills needed anymore. YOU chose to live in an earthquake zone. YOU didn't wash your hands enough. It is always your fault and responsibility to deal with whatever misfortune befalls YOU. But I'm pretty sure these folks will not want to hear that, because they don't really believe in personal responsibility. It is just a cover for being bigots.

Where Have the National Guard Troops Been?

Via AP:


Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck -- a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.


From Chicago Sun-Times:

A visibly angry Mayor Daley said the city had offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck.

(...)

Daley said the city offered 36 members of the firefighters' technical rescue teams, eight emergency medical technicians, search-and-rescue equipment, more than 100 police officers as well as police vehicles and two boats, 29 clinical and 117 non-clinical health workers, a mobile clinic and eight trained personnel, 140 Streets and Sanitation workers and 29 trucks, plus other supplies. City personnel are willing to operate self-sufficiently and would not depend on local authorities for food, water, shelter and other supplies, he said.

Bush Administration: All PR, All The Time

Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:

There was a striking discrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time. The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.


Clearing work only for Bush?

In the parts of the disaster area where the US president visited, auxiliary troops [National Guard] cleared up properly beforehand - but only there. ZDF correspondent Claudia Rueggeberg quoted desperate inhabitants asking, "Why is Bush bringing loud bodyguards and his assistants here in his cars, instead of provisions?"


Along the President's route, troops had cleared debris before Bush arrived would have cleared before Bushs attendance debris and would have hidden corpses. Then Bush left, "and with it", said Rueggeberg, "so did the troops". In Biloxi, the situation remains unchanged - everything is still lacking.

This is from a reporter from the German Tagesschau:
Bottom line: When the convoy of the President arrived, hectic activity broke out for the first time, bulldozers appeared and cleared areas that didn't need clearing because nobody was still living there, and when the President disappeared, so did the bulldozers and workers.

Christine Adelhardt, the reporter, said, that the fake scenario shocked her as much as the destruction she had seen.


Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) reports on BushCo faking levee repairs for a photo-op:

[T]he greatest disappointment [regarding the federal response] 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.

The Effects of Conservativism

From the Finacial Times of London

Bush policies have crippled disaster response

There are at least three reasons why the hurricane may mark a turning point in the US debate over the role of government.

First, the deep tax cuts enacted in 2001 - which President George W.?Bush now wants extended permanently - left no room for government initiatives that might have prevented the catastrophe and increased capacity to respond.

(...) [The article notes all the funding cuts by Bush for required work on the New Orleans levees]

Second, despite huge increases in spending to fight the war in Iraq, the hurricane revealed how thinly the US military has been stretched. [The article notes how the local National Guard was in Iraq ]

(...)

Most striking, however, has been how the storm has ruthlessly exposed the poverty that still afflicts a substantial minority of Americans, and has grown worse since Mr Bush pushed through tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the well-to-do. The US Census Bureau reported this week that another 1.1m Americans slipped below the poverty line last year. After falling for most of a decade, since 2000 the number of Americans in poverty has grown from 11.3 per cent to 12.7 per cent of the population - a higher percentage than in the 1970s despite 30 years of generally robust economic growth.

With the New Deal in the 1930s, helping those who could not help themselves became a mission that spawned a vast expansion of government's role. After a generation of determined effort the conservative movement has succeeded in squelching that mission. In the aftermath of Katrina, its success appears to have come at high cost.

Un-fucking-believable

From DailyKos September 2
Red Cross NEVER allowed into New Orleans.
by SteveRose [Subscribe]
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005 at 18:02:05 PDT
My first diary! This whole week has been so depressing. My Red Cross donation was one bright spot. At least I had done something to help.

Then, after reading dKos and the other blogs all week and seeing over and over again comments that that FEMA and the NG were no where to be seen from the people on the ground in NO, I was wondering where the Red Cross was in all this. They were never mentioned. It was like they didn't exist. And, after yesterday's drama at the convention center, the Brown and Chertoff lies, the Red Cross was still MIA. Then, earlier today, I saw a note that the Red Cross was not allowed to enter NO. Hmm, that's doesn't make sense. This simmered for a couple hours.

So I called the Red Cross and asked them if its true....

And, to my surprise, the nice lady answering the phone said it was true and they told/asked/ordered not to enter NO. She then went right into her spiel about all the other work the Red Cross was doing across the region. I said that's nice, but I still didn't understand why they weren't in NO. To my amazement, she patiently explained it to me. I even called back to verify what she said. This time she asked if I was media, I said no, just a concerned and confused contributor.

So here goes: Homeland Security (her term, not mine) told the Red Cross DO NOT enter New Orleans and says this still now. And why, you may ask? Not Security. Not worker safety. Not lack of access. It was because people would be drawn to the Red Cross food and they wouldn't want to go to be evacuated. So I asked: "The people starving and dying at the convention center yesterday couldn't get Red Cross food and water because they would be drawn to the food at the convention center, where they were, and not want to be evacuated from the convention center where no evacuations were going on or planned and all the while they are dying". (Actually, it was a couple questions.) She went back into her spiel about all of the other good work they were doing. When I asked again, she said yes, that was true. She seem relieved to admit it.

In closing, I asked if she asked this question before since she was very familiar with the answer she gave. She said yes. And I promised another donation. Which they will get after this post.

So, the question for Bushies, why was the Red Cross banned from NO when they knew people were starving? Could it be they were saving the convention center rescue until Bush's visit today? It certainly seems like it. Doesn't it?

What Are Bush's Real Priorities

We can see why Bush couldn't do anything for disaster relief. He was busy doing this.

Bush Bypasses Senate to Install Official

By KEN THOMAS
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 1, 2005; 9:38 PM

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has used a constitutional provision to bypass the Senate and fill a top Justice Department slot with an official whose nomination stalled over tactics at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility.

Bush used a "recess appointment" Wednesday to name Alice S. Fisher to lead the agency's criminal division. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had blocked the nomination because he wants to talk to an agent who named Fisher in an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo.

This Mother Fucker Is in Charge of FEMA

This from dailykos. It shows the type of political hacks Bush has placed in government and why people are still dying in New Orleans.

FEMA Dir. Mike Brown fired from prior job at Horse Assoc.
by Goldy at HorsesAss [Subscribe]
Fri Sep 2nd, 2005 at 00:46:22 PDT
[editor's note, by Goldy at HorsesAss] Revised title


"An unmitigated, total fucking disaster." That's not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it's not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.


I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago.

Goldy at HorsesAss's diary :: ::

He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.


Yes, that's right... the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the "Judges and Stewards Commissioner" for the International Arabian Horses Association... a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

And what of that misleading White House press release?


From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

I can't even begin to fact check the dates or IAHA's alleged relationship to the US Olympic Committee, because of course, the IAHA doesn't exist anymore, so there's nothing to Google. But it begs the question... how the hell did his prior job experience prepare Brown to head FEMA?

Well, judging by his agency's performance over the past few days... it didn't.

Fuck the Bush Administration

This is some of the horrible behavior and statements coming out of the Bush Administration during this crisis.

John Aravosis points to a Gawker report that says Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in New York City catching up on Broadway shows and shoe shopping. Apparently a customer in the same store, after seeing a Bush cabinet official shoe shopping while New Orleans lay in ruins, ran up and chastised Rice by saying: "How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!" Rice's reponse? She had the questioner physically removed from the store while she shopped.
Condoleeza Rice can burn in hell. They ought to drop her off at Superdome and she how she likes that.

Chertoff Blames Refugees and the Dead for Their Fate
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff today:

"The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster," he said on NBC's Today program. "Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part."

Fuck You and the Horse Your Rode In On Michael Chertoff.