With apologies to the Beatles, just read below as Rita gives us a high five:
"Winds greater than 155 mph. Storm surge generally greater than 18 ft above normal. Complete roof failure on many residences and industrial buildings. Some complete building failures with small utility buildings blown over or away. All shrubs, trees, and signs blown down. Complete destruction of mobile homes. Severe and extensive window and door damage. Low-lying escape routes are cut by rising water 3-5 hours before arrival of the center of the hurricane. Major damage to lower floors of all structures located less than 15 ft above sea level and within 500 yards of the shoreline. Massive evacuation of residential areas on low ground within 5-10 miles (8-16 km) of the shoreline may be required."
God help us.
Three, count 'em, three Cat 5 storms have made landfall in the U.S. since records were kept. Katrina was a Category 4+++ and then you turn around with another in less than a month? And as Schmidlap points out, we have three out in the Pacific and one in the Atlantic on-deck circle.
But climate change has NOTHING to do with this. Right.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Well, I saw it in the want ads....
Look, we all know Blinky the Chimp is completely overmatched for the job he has now. While through hard work and clean living, I'm sure he has put a little away for a rainy day, but if he does the world a favor and steps down, he is going to need a job. I did some hunting in the local paper for some jobs he could handle. What do you think?
LABORER/CLEAN-UP: Local remodeling company looking for reliable laborer. Must have own transportation and good communication skills.
Oops, not that one. Reliable? Hardly. Good communication skills? Um, no.
LABORERS: Experienced Must have drivers license.
Scratch that one too, driving isn't his strong suit.
General Labor Conssession / Attendant Mature responsible person to work occasional weekdays & weekends.
Sorry, he isn't responsible for anything!
CHILD CARE ATTENDANT Do you enjoy working w/ children
Well....
No, I don't think so.
Wait, I've got it!
GENERAL LANDSCAPING. Knowledge of English not required.
BINGO!!!
LABORER/CLEAN-UP: Local remodeling company looking for reliable laborer. Must have own transportation and good communication skills.
Oops, not that one. Reliable? Hardly. Good communication skills? Um, no.
LABORERS: Experienced Must have drivers license.
Scratch that one too, driving isn't his strong suit.
General Labor Conssession / Attendant Mature responsible person to work occasional weekdays & weekends.
Sorry, he isn't responsible for anything!
CHILD CARE ATTENDANT Do you enjoy working w/ children
Well....
No, I don't think so.
Wait, I've got it!
GENERAL LANDSCAPING. Knowledge of English not required.
BINGO!!!
Jackson Square
We have here an image of a strong, decisive president who energetically led a nation through trying and divisive times.
(Oh, also in front of Andrew Jackson is some blinking idiot.)
(Oh, also in front of Andrew Jackson is some blinking idiot.)
Has anyone seen my keys?
I wanted to take a break from politics for just a minute to address something..hey look, bubble wrap! Now where was I? Oh, that's right, I was just about to, hang on, going to check ESPN for a minute, I'll be right back, hmm, I'm hungry, honey, I'll get to it soon, damn, has anyone seen my keys? Oh yes, I was about to address attention deficit disorder.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not pop psychology, this is a very real condition. It is far more than being flighty or disorganized. It is a neurological condition that profoundly affects the way the brain processes information.
For years my life was a tumultuous chaos of lost papers, missed deadlines, forgotten appointments, procrastination and as mentioned above, the ever-present "has anyone seen my keys?" While there is certainly some chaos, recognizing ADD as a problem and addressing it as such has made a tremendous difference.
I have opted for medication, unless Tom Cruise tells me not to, and it has been a godsend. Unlike Tom, however, I do not dare to assume that I have all the answers and I certainly have no expertise to assess treatment alternatives. There are medications with basic chemical differences, some stimulants, others not, and medication may not be right for all cases. All I'm saying is if you feel like you are trapped in a giant pinball machine with lights flashing and bells constantly ringing, or if you see your child struggle with the organizational demands of school. please talk to a professional. It is real, and it won't go away.
Has anyone seen my keys? Oh, wait, here they are.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is not pop psychology, this is a very real condition. It is far more than being flighty or disorganized. It is a neurological condition that profoundly affects the way the brain processes information.
For years my life was a tumultuous chaos of lost papers, missed deadlines, forgotten appointments, procrastination and as mentioned above, the ever-present "has anyone seen my keys?" While there is certainly some chaos, recognizing ADD as a problem and addressing it as such has made a tremendous difference.
I have opted for medication, unless Tom Cruise tells me not to, and it has been a godsend. Unlike Tom, however, I do not dare to assume that I have all the answers and I certainly have no expertise to assess treatment alternatives. There are medications with basic chemical differences, some stimulants, others not, and medication may not be right for all cases. All I'm saying is if you feel like you are trapped in a giant pinball machine with lights flashing and bells constantly ringing, or if you see your child struggle with the organizational demands of school. please talk to a professional. It is real, and it won't go away.
Has anyone seen my keys? Oh, wait, here they are.
Monday, September 19, 2005
The hurrieder he goes, the behinder he gets
The Hurrieder President Bush Goes, The Behinder He Gets: 3 polling days after George W. Bush's prime-time speech to the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans, a "can't win" dynamic is unfolding for the President, according to exclusive SurveyUSA data gathered Friday 9/16, Saturday 9/17 and Sunday 9/18. The number of Americans who now approve of the President's response to Hurricane Katrina is down: 40% today compared to 42% before he announced the Gulf Opportunity Zone.
The number of Americans who disapprove of the President's response to Katrina is up: 56% today compared to 52% before the speech. Bush went from "Minus 10" on his Response to Katrina before the speech to "Minus 16" today. One way to make sense of these numbers is to look at the number of Americans who today say the Federal Government is doing "too much" for Katrina victims. That's up to 16% today, more than triple what the number has been on 7 of the 19 days that SurveyUSA has conducted daily tracking since the storm.
The more cash President Bush throws on the fire, as compensation for what some see as an inadequate initial response, the more it antagonizes his core supporters. Consider, for example: the number of Whites who today say the Government is "not doing enough" for Katrina victims is statistically the same as the number of Whites who say the Government is doing "just the right amount." (41% "right amount"; 40% "not enough.")
The number of Blacks who today say the Government is "not doing enough" is 51 percentage points higher than the number of Blacks who say the Government is doing the "right amount" (70% "not enough"; 19% "right amount.") That's a 53-point disagreement between Whites and Blacks on this question. What other poll results point to the conclusion that the President is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't? (titters) 41% of Americans today say that the city of New Orleans should be rebuilt with "private money," the highest that number
The number of Americans who disapprove of the President's response to Katrina is up: 56% today compared to 52% before the speech. Bush went from "Minus 10" on his Response to Katrina before the speech to "Minus 16" today. One way to make sense of these numbers is to look at the number of Americans who today say the Federal Government is doing "too much" for Katrina victims. That's up to 16% today, more than triple what the number has been on 7 of the 19 days that SurveyUSA has conducted daily tracking since the storm.
The more cash President Bush throws on the fire, as compensation for what some see as an inadequate initial response, the more it antagonizes his core supporters. Consider, for example: the number of Whites who today say the Government is "not doing enough" for Katrina victims is statistically the same as the number of Whites who say the Government is doing "just the right amount." (41% "right amount"; 40% "not enough.")
The number of Blacks who today say the Government is "not doing enough" is 51 percentage points higher than the number of Blacks who say the Government is doing the "right amount" (70% "not enough"; 19% "right amount.") That's a 53-point disagreement between Whites and Blacks on this question. What other poll results point to the conclusion that the President is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't? (titters) 41% of Americans today say that the city of New Orleans should be rebuilt with "private money," the highest that number
No more boat rides, Son...
Clinton on Bush
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bill Clinton made nice with George W. Bush. Those days seem to be over. Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, Clinton had a few words to say about the policies of his successor, and they weren't the kind designed to get him invited for another boat ride with the president's father.
Some highlights:
On rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts to pay for Katrina: "I think it's very important that Americans understand, you know, tax cuts are always popular, but about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I've gotten four tax cuts. They're responsible for this big structural deficit, and they're not going away, the deficits aren't. Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
On the Republicans' responsibility for problems involving poverty and race: "If you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the '80s; that's what they've done in this decade. In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower-income working people and benefits to low-income people that helped them move from welfare to work, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works, and we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty, and they got rid of it. And they don't believe in it."
On whether the United States has a strategy for winning in Iraq: "Well, if we do, it's not working right now, at least ... A lot of good Americans have given their lives; thousands of others have been horribly wounded. So I have been in a position where I wanted the strategy to work. Whether it will or not, I don't know. But the only thing I would sacrifice it to is if I thought we were going to lose in Afghanistan. We cannot lose in Afghanistan. We cannot let the Taliban come back. We cannot let [Hamad] Karzai fail. We cannot relax our efforts to try to keep undermining al-Qaida, because that's still by far a bigger threat to our security."
-- T.G.
In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bill Clinton made nice with George W. Bush. Those days seem to be over. Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, Clinton had a few words to say about the policies of his successor, and they weren't the kind designed to get him invited for another boat ride with the president's father.
Some highlights:
On rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts to pay for Katrina: "I think it's very important that Americans understand, you know, tax cuts are always popular, but about half of these tax cuts since 2001 have gone to people in my income group, the top 1 percent. I've gotten four tax cuts. They're responsible for this big structural deficit, and they're not going away, the deficits aren't. Now, what Americans need to understand is that that means every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina and our tax cuts. We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else."
On the Republicans' responsibility for problems involving poverty and race: "If you give your tax cuts to the rich and hope everything works out all right, and poverty goes up, and it disproportionately affects black and brown people, that's a consequence of the action made. That's what they did in the '80s; that's what they've done in this decade. In the middle, we had a different policy. We concentrated tax cuts on lower-income working people and benefits to low-income people that helped them move from welfare to work, and we moved 100 times as many people out of poverty. We know what works, and we had a program that was drastically reducing poverty, and they got rid of it. And they don't believe in it."
On whether the United States has a strategy for winning in Iraq: "Well, if we do, it's not working right now, at least ... A lot of good Americans have given their lives; thousands of others have been horribly wounded. So I have been in a position where I wanted the strategy to work. Whether it will or not, I don't know. But the only thing I would sacrifice it to is if I thought we were going to lose in Afghanistan. We cannot lose in Afghanistan. We cannot let the Taliban come back. We cannot let [Hamad] Karzai fail. We cannot relax our efforts to try to keep undermining al-Qaida, because that's still by far a bigger threat to our security."
-- T.G.
Playing Politics?
To answer the question above--YES!!!
I have heard the screech owls from the right object to "playing politics" (apparently this is a different game from the "Blame Game," should I check with Hoyle?) with this disaster. Should we “play politics?” Should we take advantage of a disaster? Should we “exploit” this tragedy?
The obvious response is YES!!!!
First of all, we have the oh so simplistic black pot and black kettle angle. Think about how the Republicans “exploited,” “played politics,” etc. with the attacks of September 11, 2001. They did so despite the whole “Bin Laden to attack in United States” memo, remember?
Honestly, I do not blame the administration for 9/11. Was there more they could have done? Certainly. Would it have been effective? Who knows, while well-planned, the attacks were fairly low-tech, a few guys you could fit in a phone booth and some box cutters. But in terms of playing politics? This administration parlayed a horrific attack and a national tragedy into an unrelated misbegotten war. And just think how they capitalized on that, from embedded reporters to questioning the patriotism of critics to Captain Codpiece and his Greatest American Hero flightsuit landing. They also played on that horrific image and the country’s fear of “terror” to “win” “re-election.” (Ohio and Florida, hello!)
But beyond the obvious pot and kettle stuff, there are legitimate reasons for running on this. First of all, it clearly demonstrates this party’s PRIORITIES. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, levees be damned!
Secondly, it deals with INTEGRITY. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job?” This administration promoted a grotesquely incompetent man to a position of national importance based on cronyism? His superior had no experience in disaster management? Then factor in the lies and half-truths put forth by the administration to try and cover their failings and blame others.
But to my mind, the clincher as to why we not only can but MUST run on this is the question of COMPETENCE. This is a two-fold question. The first is an obvious attack on THIS administration, as they demonstrated their grotesque incompetence. Given that they ran on a platform of making us safer, it is absolutely fair to hold up their failings. Mismanagement, missed opportunities, lost lives and really bad air guitar!
I see, however, the incompetence not only of an administration but also that of an ideology. As Grover Norquist, an influential advisor of the president stated, their goal was to reduce the federal government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Well, they didn’t reduce the size of the federal government, as a quick look at the debt and deficit numbers will show. However, they did reduce its effectiveness, and when they dragged it into the bathroom, New Orleans drowned, and God only knows, that was no bathtub.
I have heard the screech owls from the right object to "playing politics" (apparently this is a different game from the "Blame Game," should I check with Hoyle?) with this disaster. Should we “play politics?” Should we take advantage of a disaster? Should we “exploit” this tragedy?
The obvious response is YES!!!!
First of all, we have the oh so simplistic black pot and black kettle angle. Think about how the Republicans “exploited,” “played politics,” etc. with the attacks of September 11, 2001. They did so despite the whole “Bin Laden to attack in United States” memo, remember?
Honestly, I do not blame the administration for 9/11. Was there more they could have done? Certainly. Would it have been effective? Who knows, while well-planned, the attacks were fairly low-tech, a few guys you could fit in a phone booth and some box cutters. But in terms of playing politics? This administration parlayed a horrific attack and a national tragedy into an unrelated misbegotten war. And just think how they capitalized on that, from embedded reporters to questioning the patriotism of critics to Captain Codpiece and his Greatest American Hero flightsuit landing. They also played on that horrific image and the country’s fear of “terror” to “win” “re-election.” (Ohio and Florida, hello!)
But beyond the obvious pot and kettle stuff, there are legitimate reasons for running on this. First of all, it clearly demonstrates this party’s PRIORITIES. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts, levees be damned!
Secondly, it deals with INTEGRITY. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job?” This administration promoted a grotesquely incompetent man to a position of national importance based on cronyism? His superior had no experience in disaster management? Then factor in the lies and half-truths put forth by the administration to try and cover their failings and blame others.
But to my mind, the clincher as to why we not only can but MUST run on this is the question of COMPETENCE. This is a two-fold question. The first is an obvious attack on THIS administration, as they demonstrated their grotesque incompetence. Given that they ran on a platform of making us safer, it is absolutely fair to hold up their failings. Mismanagement, missed opportunities, lost lives and really bad air guitar!
I see, however, the incompetence not only of an administration but also that of an ideology. As Grover Norquist, an influential advisor of the president stated, their goal was to reduce the federal government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Well, they didn’t reduce the size of the federal government, as a quick look at the debt and deficit numbers will show. However, they did reduce its effectiveness, and when they dragged it into the bathroom, New Orleans drowned, and God only knows, that was no bathtub.
Profiles in cowardice
John F. Kennedy described Edmund G. Ross in his Pulitzer Prize winning book as one of the Senate's Profiles in Courage. It is quite possible that JFK didn't write the book himself, and the esteemed Mr. Ross may well not have not been a paragon of virtue, but still, his case remains quite illustrative.
Edmund Ross was a Republican senator from Kansas. Despite much pressure from his own party, he cast the decisive vote to acquit Andrew Johnson in the president's Senate impeachment trial.
Fast-forward some seven generations, and the spotlight turns on David Vitter, freshman senator from Louisiana. At a time when a straight party-line vote by his fellow Republicans blocks an independent inquiry into the Katrina disaster, Sen. Vitter stands up and DOESN'T VOTE. hr refuses to challenge the party leadership and call for an independent investigation. He represents a state most in need of answers and he refuses to call for the questions to be asked. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a profile in cowardice.
Congratulations, Senator Vitter, you must be so proud.
Edmund Ross was a Republican senator from Kansas. Despite much pressure from his own party, he cast the decisive vote to acquit Andrew Johnson in the president's Senate impeachment trial.
Fast-forward some seven generations, and the spotlight turns on David Vitter, freshman senator from Louisiana. At a time when a straight party-line vote by his fellow Republicans blocks an independent inquiry into the Katrina disaster, Sen. Vitter stands up and DOESN'T VOTE. hr refuses to challenge the party leadership and call for an independent investigation. He represents a state most in need of answers and he refuses to call for the questions to be asked. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a profile in cowardice.
Congratulations, Senator Vitter, you must be so proud.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
A question for you to ponder....
This came up in church a couple of weeks ago. It is a very simple question, yes or no.
Would you leave this country and renounce your U.S. citizenship for $10 million?
Would you leave this country and renounce your U.S. citizenship for $10 million?
The hits (literally) just keep on comin'
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents assassinated a Kurdish member of parliament and police found 20 bodies shot to death and dumped in the Tigris River north of the capital, where there was no major violence Sunday for the first time in five days.
More at Yahoo news.
More at Yahoo news.
No doubt about it
"If I'm focusing on the hurricane, I've got the capacity to focus on foreign policy, and vice versa."
From the "Freedom is on the March" file
An observer in Iraq writes:
"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.
The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody.
A few minutes ago Jaafari came on television to tell everyone in Baghdad to stay home. Can't wait for his next bold move.
There are flyers in public areas of Baghdad warning people not to gather in large numbers because they will thereby become targets. I am trying to get a copy of the flyer.
Notwithstanding Al-Hayat's claim that Zarqawi and the Sunni resistance are not together, my street listeners claim otherwise. My folks are convinced that the two groups, broadly defined, are together, "100 percent" is the claim of certainty. It is hard to get a handle on this because people in Baghdad tend to lump all resistance groups, except for Zarqawi, into one large category.
More and more of even the most patriotic intelligentsia are departing. The situation is dire, and those with escape valves are using them. [Some organizations are]sending more of [their] staff to Arbil and Sulamaniyah and out of Baghdad. Until about March this year, [some] thought that there was a chance of returning to Baghdad. It is remarkable how incapable this government is. Its only success is that it exists at all.
In the meantime, the embassy people act as if nothing in Baghdad is wrong (except that they cannot walk in the Green Zone without body armor and they have to take precautions against kidnapping). Recently, a group from State and the military parachuted in from Washington [with fatuous advice] . . . It is a fantasy world."
www.juancole.com
"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.
The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody.
A few minutes ago Jaafari came on television to tell everyone in Baghdad to stay home. Can't wait for his next bold move.
There are flyers in public areas of Baghdad warning people not to gather in large numbers because they will thereby become targets. I am trying to get a copy of the flyer.
Notwithstanding Al-Hayat's claim that Zarqawi and the Sunni resistance are not together, my street listeners claim otherwise. My folks are convinced that the two groups, broadly defined, are together, "100 percent" is the claim of certainty. It is hard to get a handle on this because people in Baghdad tend to lump all resistance groups, except for Zarqawi, into one large category.
More and more of even the most patriotic intelligentsia are departing. The situation is dire, and those with escape valves are using them. [Some organizations are]sending more of [their] staff to Arbil and Sulamaniyah and out of Baghdad. Until about March this year, [some] thought that there was a chance of returning to Baghdad. It is remarkable how incapable this government is. Its only success is that it exists at all.
In the meantime, the embassy people act as if nothing in Baghdad is wrong (except that they cannot walk in the Green Zone without body armor and they have to take precautions against kidnapping). Recently, a group from State and the military parachuted in from Washington [with fatuous advice] . . . It is a fantasy world."
www.juancole.com
Saturday, September 17, 2005
And now for something completely different
The Chicago White Sox lost today to the Minnesota Twins and one of the best pitchers in MLB, Johan Santana. The loss shaves another half-game off a diminishing lead that looked unsurmountable four weeks ago.
As I mentioned in my profile, I grew up a Cub fan. Now here in greater Chicago, the general response of Cub fans is "Sox suck!" But au contraire, mon ami!
First of all, let me set the stage. I am old, very old (as of Wednesday, a painful 48). I grew up in Illinois' version of Appalachia, a town of 300 people, a high school of 137, where you were either a Cub or Cardinal fan. My kids (the oldest not a kid any more, a sophomore at DePauw University and a contributor to this blog) look at me like I have an axe in my head when I tell them I had two TV channels to watch growing up (hey, I didn't meet a Catholic until college or a Jewish person until law school). We had NBC's "Game of the Week" which was ALWAYS the Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers, and then on Sundays, and the odd night game on the (WAY before cable) we would get the WGN Chicago Cubs Continental Broadcasting Network (Anyone from Champaign, Springfield, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, South Bend, etc. of a certain age knows what I mean) on one channel and the Cardinals on another.
And those folks like me generally didn't give much thought to the White Sox, because unfortunately UNTIL RECENTLY the Sox did not market properly and did not understand the power of television. But as a downstater moved up here, I want the White Sox to win every game they play except against the Cubs. I want playoff baseball in town. So my long-winded point is this...CHICAGO WHITE SOX, WIN THE %^^&**ing division!
p.s. Cardinals suck
As I mentioned in my profile, I grew up a Cub fan. Now here in greater Chicago, the general response of Cub fans is "Sox suck!" But au contraire, mon ami!
First of all, let me set the stage. I am old, very old (as of Wednesday, a painful 48). I grew up in Illinois' version of Appalachia, a town of 300 people, a high school of 137, where you were either a Cub or Cardinal fan. My kids (the oldest not a kid any more, a sophomore at DePauw University and a contributor to this blog) look at me like I have an axe in my head when I tell them I had two TV channels to watch growing up (hey, I didn't meet a Catholic until college or a Jewish person until law school). We had NBC's "Game of the Week" which was ALWAYS the Yankees, Red Sox or Dodgers, and then on Sundays, and the odd night game on the (WAY before cable) we would get the WGN Chicago Cubs Continental Broadcasting Network (Anyone from Champaign, Springfield, Des Moines, the Quad Cities, South Bend, etc. of a certain age knows what I mean) on one channel and the Cardinals on another.
And those folks like me generally didn't give much thought to the White Sox, because unfortunately UNTIL RECENTLY the Sox did not market properly and did not understand the power of television. But as a downstater moved up here, I want the White Sox to win every game they play except against the Cubs. I want playoff baseball in town. So my long-winded point is this...CHICAGO WHITE SOX, WIN THE %^^&**ing division!
p.s. Cardinals suck
The Wisdom of the Ages
Spoken in the great hall of government on the eve of a distant war:
Men are to be brought to this black business hoodwinked. They are to be drawn in by degrees, until they cannot retreat. We are breaking through all those sacred maxims of our forefathers, and giving the alarm to every wise man on the continent of America that all his rights depend on the will of men whose corruptions are notorious, who regard him as an enemy and who have no interest in his prosperity.
George Johnstone, House of Commons, October 1775
Men are to be brought to this black business hoodwinked. They are to be drawn in by degrees, until they cannot retreat. We are breaking through all those sacred maxims of our forefathers, and giving the alarm to every wise man on the continent of America that all his rights depend on the will of men whose corruptions are notorious, who regard him as an enemy and who have no interest in his prosperity.
George Johnstone, House of Commons, October 1775
George, George, Bo Beorge, Bonana, Fanna, Fo Feorge
George, George, Bo Beorge Bonana, Fanna, Fo Feorge Fee, Fy, Mo Meorge, George! The Blame Game!
Key military help for victims of Hurricane Katrina was delayed
By Drew Brown, Seth Borenstein and Alison Young
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush went on national television to announce a massive federal rescue and relief effort.
But orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days.
Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters. Another 2,500 soon followed from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.
"If the 1st Cav and 82nd Airborne had gotten there on time, I think we would have saved some lives," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Reagan from 1985 to 1989. "We recognized we had to get people out, and they had helicopters to do that."
Federal officials have long known that the active-duty military is the only organization with the massive resources and effective command structure to handle a major catastrophe.
In a 1996 Pentagon report, the Department of Defense acknowledged its large role in major disasters. Between 1992 and 1996, the Pentagon provided support in 18 disasters and developed five training manuals on how to work with FEMA and civilians in natural disasters.
"In catastrophic disasters, DOD will likely provide Hurricane Andrew-levels of support and predominately operate in urban or suburban terrain," the report said. "This should be incorporated into planning assumptions."
The delay this time in tapping the troops, helicopters, trucks, generators, communications and other resources of the 1st Cavalry and the 82nd Airborne is the latest example of how the federal response to Katrina lacked organization and leadership. And it raises further questions about the government's ability to rapidly mobilize the active-duty military now that FEMA has been absorbed into the massive, terrorism-focused Department of Homeland Security.
Addressing the nation on Thursday night in a speech from New Orleans, Bush said the storm overwhelmed the disaster relief system. "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice," he said.
Several emergency response experts, however, questioned whether Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff understood how much authority they had to tap all the resources of the federal government - including those of the Department of Defense.
"To say I've suddenly discovered the military needs to be involved is like saying wheels should be round instead of square," said Michael Greenberger, a law professor and the director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security.
During the last great hurricane - Andrew in 1992 - the failure to get food, water and shelter to Florida and to victims highlighted the importance of quickly engaging the Department of Defense.
"For such disasters, DOD is the only organization capable of providing, transporting and distributing sufficient quantities of items needed," the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, wrote in a 1993 report. It noted that the military has storehouses of food and temporary shelters, contingency planning skills, command capability - as well as the helicopters and other transportation needed to get them to a disaster scene fast.
Indeed, the new National Response Plan, the nation's blueprint for responding to disasters that was unveiled with much fanfare in January by Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge, includes a section on responding to catastrophic events.
"Unless it can be credibly established that a mobilizing Federal resource ... is not needed at the catastrophic incident venue, that resource deploys," the plan says. The plan and a 2003 presidential directive put Chertoff, as Homeland Security secretary, in charge of coordinating the federal response.
Chertoff, who aides said has been engaged in the response to Hurricane Katrina, went to Atlanta the day after the storm hit for a previously scheduled briefing on avian flu. Aides also concede that Washington officials were unable to confirm that the levees in New Orleans had failed until midday on Aug. 30. The breaches were first discovered in Louisiana some 32 hours earlier.
Greenberger, the Maryland homeland security expert, said he wonders whether Chertoff and other top federal officials understand the National Response Plan or even had read it before Katrina.
"Everything he did and everything he has said strongly suggests that that plan was never read," Greenberger said of Chertoff.
Chertoff was in Gulfport, Miss., on Friday to participate in the Harrison County National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. He took no questions from reporters. Homeland Security officials didn't return calls for comment.
Also on Friday, Bush said he thinks Congress should examine what role the military can and should play in natural disasters.
"It's important for us to learn from the storm what could have been done better," Bush said during a question-and-answer session with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "This storm will give us an opportunity to review all different types of circumstances to make sure that, you know, the president has the capacity to react."
Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, who served under President Clinton, believes that the Bush administration is mistaken if it thinks there are impediments to using the military for non-policing help in a disaster.
"When we were there and FEMA was intact, the military was a resource to us," said Witt. "We pulled them in very quickly. I don't know what rule he (Bush) talked about. ... We used military assets a lot."
Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration who also was a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks, said clear legal guidelines have been in place for using the military on U.S. soil since at least 1996, when the Justice Department was planning for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
"It's not like people hadn't thought about this," Gorelick said. "This is not new. We've had riots. We've had floods. We've had the loss of police control over communities.
"I'm puzzled as to what happened here," she said.
Scott Silliman, a former judge advocate general who's now the executive director of Duke University Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security, said he was surprised that military forces weren't on the scene more quickly after Hurricane Katrina.
"I see no impediment in law or in policy to getting them there," Silliman said. "We could have sent in helicopters. We could have sent in forces to do search and rescue and to provide humanitarian aid. Everything but law enforcement."
He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame.
"They're trying to say that greater federal authority would have made a difference," said George Haddow, a former FEMA deputy chief of staff and the co-author of a textbook on emergency management. "The reality is that the feds are the ones that screwed up in the first place. It's not about authority. It's about leadership. ... They've got all the authority already."
Key military help for victims of Hurricane Katrina was delayed
By Drew Brown, Seth Borenstein and Alison Young
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush went on national television to announce a massive federal rescue and relief effort.
But orders to move didn't reach key active military units for another three days.
Once they received them, it took just eight hours for 3,600 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., to be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi with vital search-and-rescue helicopters. Another 2,500 soon followed from the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas.
"If the 1st Cav and 82nd Airborne had gotten there on time, I think we would have saved some lives," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Reagan from 1985 to 1989. "We recognized we had to get people out, and they had helicopters to do that."
Federal officials have long known that the active-duty military is the only organization with the massive resources and effective command structure to handle a major catastrophe.
In a 1996 Pentagon report, the Department of Defense acknowledged its large role in major disasters. Between 1992 and 1996, the Pentagon provided support in 18 disasters and developed five training manuals on how to work with FEMA and civilians in natural disasters.
"In catastrophic disasters, DOD will likely provide Hurricane Andrew-levels of support and predominately operate in urban or suburban terrain," the report said. "This should be incorporated into planning assumptions."
The delay this time in tapping the troops, helicopters, trucks, generators, communications and other resources of the 1st Cavalry and the 82nd Airborne is the latest example of how the federal response to Katrina lacked organization and leadership. And it raises further questions about the government's ability to rapidly mobilize the active-duty military now that FEMA has been absorbed into the massive, terrorism-focused Department of Homeland Security.
Addressing the nation on Thursday night in a speech from New Orleans, Bush said the storm overwhelmed the disaster relief system. "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice," he said.
Several emergency response experts, however, questioned whether Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff understood how much authority they had to tap all the resources of the federal government - including those of the Department of Defense.
"To say I've suddenly discovered the military needs to be involved is like saying wheels should be round instead of square," said Michael Greenberger, a law professor and the director of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security.
During the last great hurricane - Andrew in 1992 - the failure to get food, water and shelter to Florida and to victims highlighted the importance of quickly engaging the Department of Defense.
"For such disasters, DOD is the only organization capable of providing, transporting and distributing sufficient quantities of items needed," the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, wrote in a 1993 report. It noted that the military has storehouses of food and temporary shelters, contingency planning skills, command capability - as well as the helicopters and other transportation needed to get them to a disaster scene fast.
Indeed, the new National Response Plan, the nation's blueprint for responding to disasters that was unveiled with much fanfare in January by Chertoff's predecessor, Tom Ridge, includes a section on responding to catastrophic events.
"Unless it can be credibly established that a mobilizing Federal resource ... is not needed at the catastrophic incident venue, that resource deploys," the plan says. The plan and a 2003 presidential directive put Chertoff, as Homeland Security secretary, in charge of coordinating the federal response.
Chertoff, who aides said has been engaged in the response to Hurricane Katrina, went to Atlanta the day after the storm hit for a previously scheduled briefing on avian flu. Aides also concede that Washington officials were unable to confirm that the levees in New Orleans had failed until midday on Aug. 30. The breaches were first discovered in Louisiana some 32 hours earlier.
Greenberger, the Maryland homeland security expert, said he wonders whether Chertoff and other top federal officials understand the National Response Plan or even had read it before Katrina.
"Everything he did and everything he has said strongly suggests that that plan was never read," Greenberger said of Chertoff.
Chertoff was in Gulfport, Miss., on Friday to participate in the Harrison County National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. He took no questions from reporters. Homeland Security officials didn't return calls for comment.
Also on Friday, Bush said he thinks Congress should examine what role the military can and should play in natural disasters.
"It's important for us to learn from the storm what could have been done better," Bush said during a question-and-answer session with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "This storm will give us an opportunity to review all different types of circumstances to make sure that, you know, the president has the capacity to react."
Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, who served under President Clinton, believes that the Bush administration is mistaken if it thinks there are impediments to using the military for non-policing help in a disaster.
"When we were there and FEMA was intact, the military was a resource to us," said Witt. "We pulled them in very quickly. I don't know what rule he (Bush) talked about. ... We used military assets a lot."
Jamie Gorelick, the deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration who also was a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 terror attacks, said clear legal guidelines have been in place for using the military on U.S. soil since at least 1996, when the Justice Department was planning for the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
"It's not like people hadn't thought about this," Gorelick said. "This is not new. We've had riots. We've had floods. We've had the loss of police control over communities.
"I'm puzzled as to what happened here," she said.
Scott Silliman, a former judge advocate general who's now the executive director of Duke University Law School's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security, said he was surprised that military forces weren't on the scene more quickly after Hurricane Katrina.
"I see no impediment in law or in policy to getting them there," Silliman said. "We could have sent in helicopters. We could have sent in forces to do search and rescue and to provide humanitarian aid. Everything but law enforcement."
He said someone failed to pull the trigger, but he added that an investigation is needed by an independent commission to determine who's to blame.
"They're trying to say that greater federal authority would have made a difference," said George Haddow, a former FEMA deputy chief of staff and the co-author of a textbook on emergency management. "The reality is that the feds are the ones that screwed up in the first place. It's not about authority. It's about leadership. ... They've got all the authority already."
The nuts don't far fall from the tree
"The youngest son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was arrested early Friday and charged with public intoxication and resisting arrest, law enforcement officials said.
John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin’s Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9373195/
For further thoughts on this subject, see "The 100 Percent Estate Tax" below!
John Ellis Bush, 21, was arrested by agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission at 2:30 a.m. on a corner of Austin’s Sixth Street bar district, said commission spokesman Roger Wade."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9373195/
For further thoughts on this subject, see "The 100 Percent Estate Tax" below!
Enough said....
"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"
I rest my case.
Heading up the investigation:
Heading up the recovery effort:
Looking for the real killer:
I rest my case.
Heading up the investigation:
Heading up the recovery effort:
Looking for the real killer:
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Pat, Ellen, Urban Legends...and a school bus or 2000 or so
Even though I was just using it as a riff for tasteless humor, the Pat Robertson "quote" below is very telling concerning our instant gratification culture.
We have an Air America affiliate back now in Chicago, but they mix in other syndicated shows. I heard the "quote" in the car on the Ed Schultz show and the brain just started working. For those of you that know me, you know I have a weird observational sense of humor. A Google search pulls up the "quote" when I get home and I'm off and running.
Now even though the Robertson line was just an excuse to not be funny, I do feel a bit silly for posting a fake quote--and I am just sitting here typing nonsense into the ether that nobody reads. I am not a journalist charged with any professional responsibility for accuracy---even though I do try. But you do see how the "urban legend" spreads and the damage it can do.
I am not talking about Pat or Ellen now but something much more serious.
George Stephanopoulos, shamelessly trading off the Clinton connections, repeated a vicious "urban legend"/lie--when he said that "there were 2,000 buses under water" that the mayor of New Orleans could have ordered up and done a Dunkirk-like evacuation of the poor and helpless. It may have come from a column by Wesley Pruden in the Washington Times (insert your own joke here) that may have played off a number suggested in several sources that 2,000 buses would be NEEDED to evacuate (simple math, lots of people=lots of buses). New Orleans though owned about 250 functional buses (mediamatters.org).
The "rumor" quickly spread, from right-wing blogs to Hannity on Fox, and then all over the press. So there you see urban legends, truth and journalistic ethics.
We here at The Thinker though pledge to bring you the high quality content you expect from us! You get what you pay for!
We have an Air America affiliate back now in Chicago, but they mix in other syndicated shows. I heard the "quote" in the car on the Ed Schultz show and the brain just started working. For those of you that know me, you know I have a weird observational sense of humor. A Google search pulls up the "quote" when I get home and I'm off and running.
Now even though the Robertson line was just an excuse to not be funny, I do feel a bit silly for posting a fake quote--and I am just sitting here typing nonsense into the ether that nobody reads. I am not a journalist charged with any professional responsibility for accuracy---even though I do try. But you do see how the "urban legend" spreads and the damage it can do.
I am not talking about Pat or Ellen now but something much more serious.
George Stephanopoulos, shamelessly trading off the Clinton connections, repeated a vicious "urban legend"/lie--when he said that "there were 2,000 buses under water" that the mayor of New Orleans could have ordered up and done a Dunkirk-like evacuation of the poor and helpless. It may have come from a column by Wesley Pruden in the Washington Times (insert your own joke here) that may have played off a number suggested in several sources that 2,000 buses would be NEEDED to evacuate (simple math, lots of people=lots of buses). New Orleans though owned about 250 functional buses (mediamatters.org).
The "rumor" quickly spread, from right-wing blogs to Hannity on Fox, and then all over the press. So there you see urban legends, truth and journalistic ethics.
We here at The Thinker though pledge to bring you the high quality content you expect from us! You get what you pay for!
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
More fun with Pat
Note: It appears the Robertson quote was a parody piece (see snopes.com), but heck, I still think it's funny! The interview with God below is of course genuine!
Once again, everyone's favorite psycho-evangelist has graced us with his thoughts:
"By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God's wrath," Pat Robertson said on "The 700 Club" on Sunday. "Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres' hometown?"
Now I bet you think this is going to be just another inane Robertson-bashing piece. Well, it is, but we here at The Thinker spare no expense to bring you the news you need. This is a blog exclusive, my interview with......God...
The Thinker: Well, thanks be to God for joining me tonight! The Lord be with me! By the way, how should I address you, the name too sacred to be spoken, the Lord most high?
God: Actually, you can call me Art.
The Thinker: Art?
God: Yeah, you know, "Our father who Art in heaven?"
The Thinker: Oh right...Art. OK, let's get right to it. Did you smite New Orleans with wind and water because of your rage at a lesbian hosting the Emmys?
God: Does anyone smite anything anymore? OK, first things first, up here, I get 1,256,356 digital channels in full high def plus Tivo, do you think I'm wasting my time watching CBS???? If I wanted to extract vengeance on a town because of what celebrities have done, I think I'd take out Boston first for giving us Ben Affleck. Did you see Gigli? Paycheck? Those were Me-damned awful!.
The Thinker: So Pat is completely off base?
God: Well, we all know that Pat's off his rocker and he really is annoying my kid. Dear Jesus this, dear Jesus that, over and over again. Nice turn by the youngster, though, Pat prays for a Supreme Court vacancy so we off Rehnquist instead! Nice touch, huh? But back to smiting. First of all, if I'm going to take someone out, I'm not using a hurricane. Jesus Christ (no not you, sorry, go back to watching the Notre Dame game), those things are impossible to control. Lightning, yeah, that's pretty easy, I can even zip off a tornado or two, but hurricanes? Wind one of those suckers up and you have no idea where they're going. I can aim it for New Orleans but it's like one of those old electronic vibrating football games, once you turn on the switch, it could end up anywhere. There's a real good chance that if I aim at Boubon Street that I wipe out most of Corpus Kiddo. And besides, you know that whole divine wrath thing? Way overblown. Look, I'm not as young as I used to be, I can't go getting that worked up about every little thing.
The Thinker: Well, I suppose I should let you get back to work. Thank God you were here! Is there anythink you would like to say before you go?
God: Well, I will leave you with this. First of all, on celibacy. Who in My name came up with that one? Please. And pants would be good, lose the robes, let's go with pants. The pointy hats can go too, ever sit behind one of them in a movie theater, Sweet Jesus, what a pain (no, not you! All right there sonny, watch the attitude, don't make me get cross with you!)
And the hymns, can we do a little better there? There are only so many times you can hear "Amazing Grace," how about some Stones or Van Morrison? Finally, yes, let me close with the fact there is a hell. I've been working on Pat's for a while, it is still a work in progress, but right now I'm at Harvey Fierstein, Jane Fonda and a couple of hamsters for starters. Good night! Me bless you, and may I be with you!
Once again, everyone's favorite psycho-evangelist has graced us with his thoughts:
"By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God's wrath," Pat Robertson said on "The 700 Club" on Sunday. "Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres' hometown?"
Now I bet you think this is going to be just another inane Robertson-bashing piece. Well, it is, but we here at The Thinker spare no expense to bring you the news you need. This is a blog exclusive, my interview with......God...
The Thinker: Well, thanks be to God for joining me tonight! The Lord be with me! By the way, how should I address you, the name too sacred to be spoken, the Lord most high?
God: Actually, you can call me Art.
The Thinker: Art?
God: Yeah, you know, "Our father who Art in heaven?"
The Thinker: Oh right...Art. OK, let's get right to it. Did you smite New Orleans with wind and water because of your rage at a lesbian hosting the Emmys?
God: Does anyone smite anything anymore? OK, first things first, up here, I get 1,256,356 digital channels in full high def plus Tivo, do you think I'm wasting my time watching CBS???? If I wanted to extract vengeance on a town because of what celebrities have done, I think I'd take out Boston first for giving us Ben Affleck. Did you see Gigli? Paycheck? Those were Me-damned awful!.
The Thinker: So Pat is completely off base?
God: Well, we all know that Pat's off his rocker and he really is annoying my kid. Dear Jesus this, dear Jesus that, over and over again. Nice turn by the youngster, though, Pat prays for a Supreme Court vacancy so we off Rehnquist instead! Nice touch, huh? But back to smiting. First of all, if I'm going to take someone out, I'm not using a hurricane. Jesus Christ (no not you, sorry, go back to watching the Notre Dame game), those things are impossible to control. Lightning, yeah, that's pretty easy, I can even zip off a tornado or two, but hurricanes? Wind one of those suckers up and you have no idea where they're going. I can aim it for New Orleans but it's like one of those old electronic vibrating football games, once you turn on the switch, it could end up anywhere. There's a real good chance that if I aim at Boubon Street that I wipe out most of Corpus Kiddo. And besides, you know that whole divine wrath thing? Way overblown. Look, I'm not as young as I used to be, I can't go getting that worked up about every little thing.
The Thinker: Well, I suppose I should let you get back to work. Thank God you were here! Is there anythink you would like to say before you go?
God: Well, I will leave you with this. First of all, on celibacy. Who in My name came up with that one? Please. And pants would be good, lose the robes, let's go with pants. The pointy hats can go too, ever sit behind one of them in a movie theater, Sweet Jesus, what a pain (no, not you! All right there sonny, watch the attitude, don't make me get cross with you!)
And the hymns, can we do a little better there? There are only so many times you can hear "Amazing Grace," how about some Stones or Van Morrison? Finally, yes, let me close with the fact there is a hell. I've been working on Pat's for a while, it is still a work in progress, but right now I'm at Harvey Fierstein, Jane Fonda and a couple of hamsters for starters. Good night! Me bless you, and may I be with you!
Be afraid, be very very afraid...
Janice Rogers Brown stated in a speech that "the United States Supreme Court, however, began in the 1940s to incorporate the Bill of Rights into the 14th Amendment...The historical evidence supporting what the Supreme Court did here is pretty sketchy...The argument on the other side is pretty overwhelming that it's probably not incorporated."
Fourteenth amendment? Incorporation? Janice Rogers Brown? What could any of this mean?
Well, for starters, Janice Rogers Brown is someone you should know. She sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is the bullpen for the Supreme Court, as many justices (including nominee John Roberts) have been elevated from this bench.
While Judge Brown may not be the choice to replace O'Connor on the high court, it wouldn't be surprising if it was someone of a similar judicial temperment.
We know all the usual suspects that the conservative judiciary have in their crosshairs, abortion, civil rights, gay rights, flag burning and on and on, but 14th amendment incorporation involves a fundamental transformation of the jurisprudential landscape.
The concept can be loaded down with jargon, but it is relatively simple. The Bill of Rights, as adopted, operated only against the federal government (Congress shall make no law....) As such, the states were not bound to respect these fundamental freedoms under the federal constitution. For example, Massachusetts had a state-supported church well into the early national period.
However, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment changed things. Unlike the original bill of rights, the 14th amendment acted directly on the states. States could not deny due process, equal protection or "privileges and immunities." The question became, though--just what does that mean? Over the years through a somewhat patchwork quilt of decisions, the Supreme Court has determined that many of the fundamental protections expressed in the first 10 amendments are "incorporated" against the states through the 14th. So with regard to the states, free speech and religious expression and rights such as search and seizure prohibitions fall under the 14th.
Janice Brown and like-minded judges object to the expansion of these fundamental guarantees. They want federal constitutional protections stripped away and want these most basic rights left up to state enforcement.
Be afraid, be very very afraid.
Fourteenth amendment? Incorporation? Janice Rogers Brown? What could any of this mean?
Well, for starters, Janice Rogers Brown is someone you should know. She sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This court is the bullpen for the Supreme Court, as many justices (including nominee John Roberts) have been elevated from this bench.
While Judge Brown may not be the choice to replace O'Connor on the high court, it wouldn't be surprising if it was someone of a similar judicial temperment.
We know all the usual suspects that the conservative judiciary have in their crosshairs, abortion, civil rights, gay rights, flag burning and on and on, but 14th amendment incorporation involves a fundamental transformation of the jurisprudential landscape.
The concept can be loaded down with jargon, but it is relatively simple. The Bill of Rights, as adopted, operated only against the federal government (Congress shall make no law....) As such, the states were not bound to respect these fundamental freedoms under the federal constitution. For example, Massachusetts had a state-supported church well into the early national period.
However, the Civil War and the 14th Amendment changed things. Unlike the original bill of rights, the 14th amendment acted directly on the states. States could not deny due process, equal protection or "privileges and immunities." The question became, though--just what does that mean? Over the years through a somewhat patchwork quilt of decisions, the Supreme Court has determined that many of the fundamental protections expressed in the first 10 amendments are "incorporated" against the states through the 14th. So with regard to the states, free speech and religious expression and rights such as search and seizure prohibitions fall under the 14th.
Janice Brown and like-minded judges object to the expansion of these fundamental guarantees. They want federal constitutional protections stripped away and want these most basic rights left up to state enforcement.
Be afraid, be very very afraid.
And lest we forget...
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
juancole.com
Black Wednesday's Death Toll rises to 150
The death toll in Wednesday's eight bombings in Baghdad rose to 150, with one bomb in Kadhimiyah accounting for about 114. I can only imagine that hundreds were wounded. It is the second biggest one-day toll in guerrilla violence since the fall of Saddam (only March 2, 2004, was worse). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Monotheism and Holy War, announced a "war" on Iraq's Shiites by radical Sunni Salafis. The operation was apparently in part revenge for the US/Iraqi government attack on the largely Sunni Turkmen city of Tal Afar in the north.
Although Iraqi government officials tried to put the best face on the disaster, saying that it demonstrated that the Tal Afar operation had in fact deeply threatened the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, I fear I would draw the opposite conclusion. The guerrillas in Tal Afar cleverly slipped away, and the US troops never even fought a major battle with them. The use of Kurdish troops and Shiite informers leant an ethnic cast to the campaign. Most people in Tal Afar just left the city, for all the world like New Orleans refugees in Texas and Mississippi. So as an operation, it did not amount to much, though it displaced a lot of innocent civilians. And while the US and Kurdish troops were chasing down empty streets in Tal Afar, the guerrillas blew up Baghdad.
If you don't control your capital, you control nothing. If the events of Black Wednesday were not so very tragic (those poor Shiite laborers! and their families), the situation would be absurd in a surrealist sense. The US military off in a small desert town with nothing to do but play fight club amongst themselves, while hundreds of innocent Iraqi Shiites in Kadhimiyah are massacred at will.
And the guerrillas' ability at this late date to mount such a shatteringly effective operation in the capital itself is why the pitiful and arrogant Project for a New American Century fantasy of just crushing the Sunni Arabs of Iraq is a K Street wet dream generated by intellectual adolescents, not a realistic policy. (And of course the same thing could be said of virtually everything the PNAC has ever said).
juancole.com
Black Wednesday's Death Toll rises to 150
The death toll in Wednesday's eight bombings in Baghdad rose to 150, with one bomb in Kadhimiyah accounting for about 114. I can only imagine that hundreds were wounded. It is the second biggest one-day toll in guerrilla violence since the fall of Saddam (only March 2, 2004, was worse). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Monotheism and Holy War, announced a "war" on Iraq's Shiites by radical Sunni Salafis. The operation was apparently in part revenge for the US/Iraqi government attack on the largely Sunni Turkmen city of Tal Afar in the north.
Although Iraqi government officials tried to put the best face on the disaster, saying that it demonstrated that the Tal Afar operation had in fact deeply threatened the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement, I fear I would draw the opposite conclusion. The guerrillas in Tal Afar cleverly slipped away, and the US troops never even fought a major battle with them. The use of Kurdish troops and Shiite informers leant an ethnic cast to the campaign. Most people in Tal Afar just left the city, for all the world like New Orleans refugees in Texas and Mississippi. So as an operation, it did not amount to much, though it displaced a lot of innocent civilians. And while the US and Kurdish troops were chasing down empty streets in Tal Afar, the guerrillas blew up Baghdad.
If you don't control your capital, you control nothing. If the events of Black Wednesday were not so very tragic (those poor Shiite laborers! and their families), the situation would be absurd in a surrealist sense. The US military off in a small desert town with nothing to do but play fight club amongst themselves, while hundreds of innocent Iraqi Shiites in Kadhimiyah are massacred at will.
And the guerrillas' ability at this late date to mount such a shatteringly effective operation in the capital itself is why the pitiful and arrogant Project for a New American Century fantasy of just crushing the Sunni Arabs of Iraq is a K Street wet dream generated by intellectual adolescents, not a realistic policy. (And of course the same thing could be said of virtually everything the PNAC has ever said).
Really. Seriously. No kidding.
U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.
That Toddlin' Town
Chicago, Chicago.....
Great city, beautiful lakefront, wonderful architecture, vibrant neighborhoods and one screwed-up city government!
Now I'm not talking about the large-scale mess, from hired trucks to ghost payrolling scandals. I am talking about city government incompetence as it effects me, because of course, it's all about me.
I came home to find a serious-looking certified letter from the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation. The contents were shocking. My car had been seized by the city because illegal drugs were found in it.
Before you jump to any conclusions about me--we have not owned this car since we donated it to charity in December 2004. We have all the paperwork, the Secretary of State-DMV shows that we no longer own it, all the pieces are in place, as a former Bears coach once stated.
Even though it is CLEARLY a city error, I can't just ignore it. If I did, I could get hit with a default judgment for a $1,000 penalty plus towing and storage charges. So what it boils down to is I have to file an application for a hearing, take a day off work and sit in some gawdawful waiting room forever just to show that I haven't owned a car for 9 months.
My kind of town, Chicago is....
Great city, beautiful lakefront, wonderful architecture, vibrant neighborhoods and one screwed-up city government!
Now I'm not talking about the large-scale mess, from hired trucks to ghost payrolling scandals. I am talking about city government incompetence as it effects me, because of course, it's all about me.
I came home to find a serious-looking certified letter from the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation. The contents were shocking. My car had been seized by the city because illegal drugs were found in it.
Before you jump to any conclusions about me--we have not owned this car since we donated it to charity in December 2004. We have all the paperwork, the Secretary of State-DMV shows that we no longer own it, all the pieces are in place, as a former Bears coach once stated.
Even though it is CLEARLY a city error, I can't just ignore it. If I did, I could get hit with a default judgment for a $1,000 penalty plus towing and storage charges. So what it boils down to is I have to file an application for a hearing, take a day off work and sit in some gawdawful waiting room forever just to show that I haven't owned a car for 9 months.
My kind of town, Chicago is....
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
From the "Things I Already Knew" File
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post lets us in on big secret. Chimpy may not be “the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press.”
Wow, Dan, there’s a stunner. How long did Annie Sullivan have to hold your hand under the running water for that one to sink in, Helen Keller?
He continues, “it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private, he yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.”
“Waaa….waaaah,” young Helen, or young Dan Froomkin, as the case may be, cries!
He then adds the clincher, when he states that “for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere. An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.”
Dan, this man has been parading around buck naked since his charming mother bore him. Why are you just noticing this now? According to my watch, it is 2005.
To steal from a great writer, Paul Waldman, who wrote an outstanding book you should buy NOW called Fraud, there is a recipe for building and selling a fraud to the American people:
1) portray son of one of America’s most influential families
as a down-home Texan;
2) berate media as “liberal” until they stop asking tough questions;
3) take advantage of reporters’ tendency not to check facts;
4) mask reactionary policies in compassionate words and pictures;
5) push false stories from the right-wing media into the mainstream media;
6) extol the virtues of workers while systematically pushing
an anti-labor agenda;
7) propose a series of tax cuts aimed at the wealthy, but sell
them as a boon to ordinary Americans;
8) disguise destructive initiatives with friendly-sounding names;
9) BEFRIEND MEDIA WITH “GENUINE GUY” ROUTINE;
10) keep the public from accessing information;
11) maintain message discipline at all time;
12) question patriotism of anyone who disagrees and
13) repeat above until it all seems true.
Wow, Dan, there’s a stunner. How long did Annie Sullivan have to hold your hand under the running water for that one to sink in, Helen Keller?
He continues, “it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private, he yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.”
“Waaa….waaaah,” young Helen, or young Dan Froomkin, as the case may be, cries!
He then adds the clincher, when he states that “for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere. An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.”
Dan, this man has been parading around buck naked since his charming mother bore him. Why are you just noticing this now? According to my watch, it is 2005.
To steal from a great writer, Paul Waldman, who wrote an outstanding book you should buy NOW called Fraud, there is a recipe for building and selling a fraud to the American people:
1) portray son of one of America’s most influential families
as a down-home Texan;
2) berate media as “liberal” until they stop asking tough questions;
3) take advantage of reporters’ tendency not to check facts;
4) mask reactionary policies in compassionate words and pictures;
5) push false stories from the right-wing media into the mainstream media;
6) extol the virtues of workers while systematically pushing
an anti-labor agenda;
7) propose a series of tax cuts aimed at the wealthy, but sell
them as a boon to ordinary Americans;
8) disguise destructive initiatives with friendly-sounding names;
9) BEFRIEND MEDIA WITH “GENUINE GUY” ROUTINE;
10) keep the public from accessing information;
11) maintain message discipline at all time;
12) question patriotism of anyone who disagrees and
13) repeat above until it all seems true.
From Bill Maher
Bill Maher's closing thoughts:
Now, I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.
Yeah, listen to your mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out, and no one is speaking to you: mission accomplished! Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?!
Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying that there's so many other things that you, as president, could involve yourself in...Please don't. I know, I know, there's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote. But, sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man.
Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans...Maybe you're just not lucky!
I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint!"
Now, I kid, but seriously, Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you anymore. There's no more money to spend. You used up all of that. You can't start another war because you also used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people.
Yeah, listen to your mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit card's maxed out, and no one is speaking to you: mission accomplished! Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service. And the oil company. And the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or spaceman?!
Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying that there's so many other things that you, as president, could involve yourself in...Please don't. I know, I know, there's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela, and eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote. But, sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man.
Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans...Maybe you're just not lucky!
I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint!"
The 100 Percent Estate Tax
I would hereby like to propose the 100 percent estate tax. That's right, 100 percent, every last dime. Oh, we'll carve out an exemption for the support of minor children, but basically, all of Poppy's cash goes away and every adult starts life from the same line. Just think if Paris Hilton had to survive on her own "talents." I'm seeing her as the kind of slutty but not unappealing cashier at the car repair shop, smelling slightly of cheap perfume and cigarettes.
And oh yes, the Bush boys. What if GHWB couldn't have banked the millions old Prescott made financing the Nazis or the cash from the Walker side? This man has no discernible skills and cannot utter a coherent sentence.
And oh his poor bastard son. What if W had neither been rich nor the offspring of a president? I'm thinking line cook at the Outback Steak House. "Hey, Janie, call the manager, George has his head caught in the blooming onion maker again!"
And oh yes, the Bush boys. What if GHWB couldn't have banked the millions old Prescott made financing the Nazis or the cash from the Walker side? This man has no discernible skills and cannot utter a coherent sentence.
And oh his poor bastard son. What if W had neither been rich nor the offspring of a president? I'm thinking line cook at the Outback Steak House. "Hey, Janie, call the manager, George has his head caught in the blooming onion maker again!"
Monday, September 12, 2005
The Impeachment Trifecta
Below, I posted an article from the far right calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush, and a response/call to arms from a great friend of this site.
Now it is my plan to bore you to tears with a discussion of the law of impeachment.
The founding fathers, gotta love ‘em. We had that whole ugly 3/5ths compromise thing, and let’s face it folks, they weren’t really into specifics when they crafted some of those wonderful phrases. The whole “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble” could have been fleshed out a bit, and my high school grammar teacher will NEVER forgive them for “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Dependent clause, independent clause, who knows?
But anyway, that is another story for another time.
My focus is on that awkward bit of phrasing in Article Two, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Hmm, “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors?” Thanks for the help there, guys!
We can probably trace that back to James Madison and George Mason (isn’t he the guy that usually loses by 50 to Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament?). The records indicate that while Madison was fine with treason and bribery terms, he thought that didn’t go far enough. This constitution, unlike the English parliamentary system, established a government for a set number of years, one that was not subject to votes of no confidence. So therefore, something beyond treason and bribery was necessary.
It appears that Madison crafted “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Thanks for that, Jim-really. OK, so you knew what it meant then? Could you have left us a cheat sheet?
The term “High crimes” appears to mean just that, SERIOUS criminal offenses, while the term “misdemeanors” does not refer to what a misdemeanor is today (taking a leak on someone’s yard in Wrigleyville). It refers to a serious breach of the expected level of behavior, such as negligence well beyond being just bad in the performance of official duties or official corruption.
The impeachment power granted by the constitution has been applied twice against a sitting president, and to my mind misapplied both times. Once was against a sad, sorry president, Andrew Johnson, who had no business being where he was and the other the shameless political attack against Bill Clinton because of his libido and because people liked him! Richard Nixon would have been impeached, for very legitimate reasons, had he not resigned.
While there is no agreed-upon standard, scholars generally break down the reasons for impeachment into 1) serious criminal violations, 2) abuses of authority and 3) the most problematic, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 65, a "violation of public trust."
I am a strong Hamiltonian on this one. Can one imagine a greater violation of the “public trust” than waging war on false pretenses? But anyway, back to the boring stuff.
In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee stated that impeachment was not limited criminal law violations. The committee used an old English definition of “an injury to the state or system of government” and invoked the legendary Justice Story's use of "offenses of a political character."
Have we not seen, if not high crimes (Iraq?) then certainly “misdemeanors” from this administration? This president stood by and WATCHED A CITY DIE. Think about that, the head of our “federal union” did NOTHING while New Orleans, where Benjamin Butler had “Our Federal Union, It Must Be Preserved” carved into the base of Andrew Jackson’s statue during the Civil War, died.
A misdemeanor? If I could, I would ask 18th-century CONSERVATIVE Edmund Burke about this administration, as he once said that the official should be judged "not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of morality."
Hmmm..principles of morality…..
Now it is my plan to bore you to tears with a discussion of the law of impeachment.
The founding fathers, gotta love ‘em. We had that whole ugly 3/5ths compromise thing, and let’s face it folks, they weren’t really into specifics when they crafted some of those wonderful phrases. The whole “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble” could have been fleshed out a bit, and my high school grammar teacher will NEVER forgive them for “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Dependent clause, independent clause, who knows?
But anyway, that is another story for another time.
My focus is on that awkward bit of phrasing in Article Two, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Hmm, “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors?” Thanks for the help there, guys!
We can probably trace that back to James Madison and George Mason (isn’t he the guy that usually loses by 50 to Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament?). The records indicate that while Madison was fine with treason and bribery terms, he thought that didn’t go far enough. This constitution, unlike the English parliamentary system, established a government for a set number of years, one that was not subject to votes of no confidence. So therefore, something beyond treason and bribery was necessary.
It appears that Madison crafted “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Thanks for that, Jim-really. OK, so you knew what it meant then? Could you have left us a cheat sheet?
The term “High crimes” appears to mean just that, SERIOUS criminal offenses, while the term “misdemeanors” does not refer to what a misdemeanor is today (taking a leak on someone’s yard in Wrigleyville). It refers to a serious breach of the expected level of behavior, such as negligence well beyond being just bad in the performance of official duties or official corruption.
The impeachment power granted by the constitution has been applied twice against a sitting president, and to my mind misapplied both times. Once was against a sad, sorry president, Andrew Johnson, who had no business being where he was and the other the shameless political attack against Bill Clinton because of his libido and because people liked him! Richard Nixon would have been impeached, for very legitimate reasons, had he not resigned.
While there is no agreed-upon standard, scholars generally break down the reasons for impeachment into 1) serious criminal violations, 2) abuses of authority and 3) the most problematic, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper No. 65, a "violation of public trust."
I am a strong Hamiltonian on this one. Can one imagine a greater violation of the “public trust” than waging war on false pretenses? But anyway, back to the boring stuff.
In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee stated that impeachment was not limited criminal law violations. The committee used an old English definition of “an injury to the state or system of government” and invoked the legendary Justice Story's use of "offenses of a political character."
Have we not seen, if not high crimes (Iraq?) then certainly “misdemeanors” from this administration? This president stood by and WATCHED A CITY DIE. Think about that, the head of our “federal union” did NOTHING while New Orleans, where Benjamin Butler had “Our Federal Union, It Must Be Preserved” carved into the base of Andrew Jackson’s statue during the Civil War, died.
A misdemeanor? If I could, I would ask 18th-century CONSERVATIVE Edmund Burke about this administration, as he once said that the official should be judged "not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of morality."
Hmmm..principles of morality…..
Impeachment Redux
In a comment to the post below, valued contributor Schmidlap noted:
15 seats....we need to pick up 15 seats in the House in '06 to make Articles of Impeachment a reality.
He could eat a live baby on TV and the current House would do nothing about it, so there's no point dreaming right now.
15 seats. The question for us is: where will we volunteer? Who will we support? If the race in our home district is safe, are we willing to travel?
Life or death. 15 seats.
Worthy of the front page.
15 seats....we need to pick up 15 seats in the House in '06 to make Articles of Impeachment a reality.
He could eat a live baby on TV and the current House would do nothing about it, so there's no point dreaming right now.
15 seats. The question for us is: where will we volunteer? Who will we support? If the race in our home district is safe, are we willing to travel?
Life or death. 15 seats.
Worthy of the front page.
George and the Giant ImPEACHment
I just read a column from the Creators.com website that was entitled "Impeach Bush Now." OK, no big deal, given that Creators syndicates Molly Ivins and a couple of other justifiably angry lefties. But no, this comes from Paul Craig Roberts, a man with impeccable right-wing credentials.
Check out the bio. When you see an Olin Fellowship, Townhall.com and the Hoover Institution on the resume, you know this man's conservative bona fides cannot be questioned. Add in that he was an assistant secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan years, and that one clinches that, but wait, it gets better. Mr. Roberts was an editor with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
For those of you that happen to be unfamiliar with the Wall Street Journal, the paper comes in two major parts (three on Fridays). The first part is an indispensable news source for everything business (the second, on Fridays, is a pretty cool weekend journal with wine, the arts, etc.) and then you have the editorial page. That page is run by people who are clinically as crazy as a bag of weasels. The "Chinese Wall" between the editorial page and the real paper is so high that I don't think they even invite the nutballs from editorial to the Christmas party or to play on the softball team. I don't think they even tell the editorial people where the real paper is, so for someone from the wrong side of that wall to write this is very significant.
He writes:
"The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful U.S. military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport-and this against an insurgency based in only 20 percent of the Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.
The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply.
Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests to their insane agenda. The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now, they must be held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.
What will it take for Americans to re-establish accountability in their government? Bush has gotten away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.
What disaster will next spring from Bush's incompetence?"
Well said, Dr. Roberts, thank you.
Check out the bio. When you see an Olin Fellowship, Townhall.com and the Hoover Institution on the resume, you know this man's conservative bona fides cannot be questioned. Add in that he was an assistant secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan years, and that one clinches that, but wait, it gets better. Mr. Roberts was an editor with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
For those of you that happen to be unfamiliar with the Wall Street Journal, the paper comes in two major parts (three on Fridays). The first part is an indispensable news source for everything business (the second, on Fridays, is a pretty cool weekend journal with wine, the arts, etc.) and then you have the editorial page. That page is run by people who are clinically as crazy as a bag of weasels. The "Chinese Wall" between the editorial page and the real paper is so high that I don't think they even invite the nutballs from editorial to the Christmas party or to play on the softball team. I don't think they even tell the editorial people where the real paper is, so for someone from the wrong side of that wall to write this is very significant.
He writes:
"The destruction of New Orleans is the responsibility of the most incompetent government in American history and perhaps in all history. Americans are rapidly learning that they were deceived by the superpower hubris. The powerful U.S. military cannot successfully occupy Baghdad or control the road to the airport-and this against an insurgency based in only 20 percent of the Iraqi population. Bush's pointless war has left Washington so pressed for money that the federal government abandoned New Orleans to catastrophe.
The Bush administration is damned by its gross incompetence. Bush has squandered the lives and health of thousands of people. He has run through hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars. He has lost America's reputation and its allies. With barbaric torture and destruction of our civil liberty, he has stripped America of its inherent goodness and morality. And now Bush has lost America's largest port and 25 percent of its oil supply.
Why? Because Bush started a gratuitous war egged on by a claque of crazy neoconservatives who have sacrificed America's interests to their insane agenda. The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now, they must be held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted.
What will it take for Americans to re-establish accountability in their government? Bush has gotten away with lies and an illegal war of aggression, with outing CIA agents, with war crimes against Iraqi civilians, with the horrors of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture centers, and now with the destruction of New Orleans.
What disaster will next spring from Bush's incompetence?"
Well said, Dr. Roberts, thank you.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
On the horns of a dilemma.....
The dilemma is the nomination of John Roberts to sit as Chief Justice of the United States. Despite the fact that my father considers me a Trotskyite, I tend to veer well toward the center on the question of nominees to the federal bench. It has long been my view that the president, by virtue of winning the election, gets a fairly free hand in appointing members of the federal bench.
What I have always asked for is competence. That is where we blew it on Clarence Thomas. We became so involved in misguided affections and dirty movies and pubic hairs on Coke cans that we forgot to even look at the grotesquely obvious fact that this man had no business being named to the Supreme Court.
Fast forward to John Roberts. OK, it is quite arguable whether or not Bush "won" the election and whether that deference is still due, but yet--John Roberts looks like the ultimate "qualified" candidate at first glance. He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review (I was an editor of the law review, but somehow, Champaign just doesn't have the same panache as Cambridge) and unlike Justice Affirmative Action Thomas, he had a real legal career.
My thinking though has changed. It has changed from the willingness of this president to use judicial appointments as a sledgehammer to implement a radical agenda. It has changed as federal appeals courts restrict the protection of the constitution to those embraced by the president. It has changed because the powers that be have no use for our constitution.
The charge is yours, Senators. Do what the constitution charges you to do. Advise, yes, and only if appropriate, give your consent!
What I have always asked for is competence. That is where we blew it on Clarence Thomas. We became so involved in misguided affections and dirty movies and pubic hairs on Coke cans that we forgot to even look at the grotesquely obvious fact that this man had no business being named to the Supreme Court.
Fast forward to John Roberts. OK, it is quite arguable whether or not Bush "won" the election and whether that deference is still due, but yet--John Roberts looks like the ultimate "qualified" candidate at first glance. He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review (I was an editor of the law review, but somehow, Champaign just doesn't have the same panache as Cambridge) and unlike Justice Affirmative Action Thomas, he had a real legal career.
My thinking though has changed. It has changed from the willingness of this president to use judicial appointments as a sledgehammer to implement a radical agenda. It has changed as federal appeals courts restrict the protection of the constitution to those embraced by the president. It has changed because the powers that be have no use for our constitution.
The charge is yours, Senators. Do what the constitution charges you to do. Advise, yes, and only if appropriate, give your consent!
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Return of the prodigal son?
Are we seeing signs of life in the media? Has the press finally realized that not only does the emperor have no clothes, but that this smirking moron has been walking around buck naked but for a pair of daddy's Texas boots for his entire adult life?
Anderson Cooper upbraids a senator and even repulsive Fox News toady Shepard Smith shows an ounce of humanity. Shall we then kill the fatted calf as the prodigal son has returned? The media is back, shall we dress them in the best robes and feast and dance because some highly-paid people finally decided to do the job for which they were highly paid?
Hmmm, not so fast. I am more like the loyal son bitter at his brother's failings having no consequences. He said "Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him."
OK, I don't really need a goat (well, I don't think I do, I will reserve judgment--Bob Marley and Aristotle liked goat!), and while I don't doubt that prostitutes were involved, I don't think we want to go there, but anyway, you get the point.
For five years we have seen the media ignore the record of this man while they overplayed every slip by Gore and Kerry. Judith Miller took White House feeds and wrote "1-2-3-4 I think we should go to war!" in what was once the esteemed New York Times. We see gay prostitutes featured at White House "press conferences" and reporters so giddy about being "embedded" that they don't notice why they are in bed.
OK, so a weak pulse from the media is a good thing, but we are still a long way away from the independent press we need. This is a solo home run when you're down 13-0 with two outs in the 9th. Show me what you can do when the game is on the line.
Goat, anyone?
Anderson Cooper upbraids a senator and even repulsive Fox News toady Shepard Smith shows an ounce of humanity. Shall we then kill the fatted calf as the prodigal son has returned? The media is back, shall we dress them in the best robes and feast and dance because some highly-paid people finally decided to do the job for which they were highly paid?
Hmmm, not so fast. I am more like the loyal son bitter at his brother's failings having no consequences. He said "Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him."
OK, I don't really need a goat (well, I don't think I do, I will reserve judgment--Bob Marley and Aristotle liked goat!), and while I don't doubt that prostitutes were involved, I don't think we want to go there, but anyway, you get the point.
For five years we have seen the media ignore the record of this man while they overplayed every slip by Gore and Kerry. Judith Miller took White House feeds and wrote "1-2-3-4 I think we should go to war!" in what was once the esteemed New York Times. We see gay prostitutes featured at White House "press conferences" and reporters so giddy about being "embedded" that they don't notice why they are in bed.
OK, so a weak pulse from the media is a good thing, but we are still a long way away from the independent press we need. This is a solo home run when you're down 13-0 with two outs in the 9th. Show me what you can do when the game is on the line.
Goat, anyone?
He didn't really say that, did he?
Yes, he did. While touring an evacuation shelter, Rep. Tom Delay approached three boys on cots. He compared their plight of losing their homes, all of their possessions, the possible loss of family and friends and living with nothing hundreds of miles away from home to being at camp. He actually asked, "Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?"
Fun???
File that with "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" and from Brownie himself, "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and, maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep, and then I'm going to go right back to FEMA ...."
Who are these people???
Fun???
File that with "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" and from Brownie himself, "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife and, maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep, and then I'm going to go right back to FEMA ...."
Who are these people???
The real danger
As if the destruction of the gulf coast and a nightmarish war in Iraq going from bad to worse wasn't enough, we have a little story tucked away in the back of the paper that should make you shudder:
Court allows ‘dirty bomb’ suspect to be held
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al-Qaida.
This is frightening on several levels.
Initially, it is horrifying that a federal appeals panel unanimously held that the president gets to decide who is entitled to constitutional rights and who is not. Look, I'm not defending Jose Padilla. He is a low-level street thug who may well deserve to be locked away for years. However, this country is premised, at least in theory, on the idea that we afford full constitutional protections to even the most vile of miscreants among us. Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy were each read their rights, afforded counsel, tried by juries and afforded access to appeals and to all other aspects of due process. The notion that George W. Bush, by one stroke of a pen, can banish U.S. citizens to his own private gulag without rights or recourse is indeed a shocking affront to the constitution.
But it gets worse from there. Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig is on W's short list for the Supreme Court vacancy.
Be afraid, be very very afraid.
Court allows ‘dirty bomb’ suspect to be held
The three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al-Qaida.
This is frightening on several levels.
Initially, it is horrifying that a federal appeals panel unanimously held that the president gets to decide who is entitled to constitutional rights and who is not. Look, I'm not defending Jose Padilla. He is a low-level street thug who may well deserve to be locked away for years. However, this country is premised, at least in theory, on the idea that we afford full constitutional protections to even the most vile of miscreants among us. Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy were each read their rights, afforded counsel, tried by juries and afforded access to appeals and to all other aspects of due process. The notion that George W. Bush, by one stroke of a pen, can banish U.S. citizens to his own private gulag without rights or recourse is indeed a shocking affront to the constitution.
But it gets worse from there. Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig is on W's short list for the Supreme Court vacancy.
Be afraid, be very very afraid.
Meanwhile, back in Frostbite Falls......
Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan reminds us that the Bush disaster area extends from the Gulf Coast to the Tigris-Euphrates Valley:
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Private Company Shuts down Baghdad International Airport, More violence in Baghdad
The steady drumbeat of mayhem continued again on Friday. One bomb in Baghdad killed 4 persons, including three policemen, and wounded 9. There were other assassinations and guerrilla violence elsewhere in the country and the university.
Al-Zaman: American forces, both infantry and armor moved further into the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar. The city was completely surrounded. A local source says that 90 percent of the city's residents have fled. Those who remain have received commands by pamphlet to leave. Local health officials are alleging that 170 persons have been sickened by poison. Eyewitnesses speak of heavy US aerial bombardment of suspected guerrilla hideouts in the city.
Apparently northern Mosul is also out of control, and the Iraqi government is pledging to bring it back under government authority. There is some connection between that task and coordinating with the local authorities about the October 15 referendum. It is expected that the major Iraqi cities [in the northt] will reject he constitution in this referendum.
A national guard unit from Minnesota in Iraq speaks out about severe sleep deprivation, 60 men doing the work of 120, sand flies, and bitter disillusionment. Most of them seem likely to get out of the National Guard as soon as the Pentagon lifts the "stop-loss" (a.k.a. kidnapping) order that keeps them in past their sign-up period. The level of discontent must be enormous for them to speak to the press despite severe pressure within the military not to do so.
A private company has shut down Baghdad International Airport because it has not been paid for supplying security there. It maintains that the Iraqis cannot provide security to the required standards. As the Iraqis pointed out in response, surely the Iraqi government is sovereign over the airport!
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Private Company Shuts down Baghdad International Airport, More violence in Baghdad
The steady drumbeat of mayhem continued again on Friday. One bomb in Baghdad killed 4 persons, including three policemen, and wounded 9. There were other assassinations and guerrilla violence elsewhere in the country and the university.
Al-Zaman: American forces, both infantry and armor moved further into the northern Turkmen city of Tal Afar. The city was completely surrounded. A local source says that 90 percent of the city's residents have fled. Those who remain have received commands by pamphlet to leave. Local health officials are alleging that 170 persons have been sickened by poison. Eyewitnesses speak of heavy US aerial bombardment of suspected guerrilla hideouts in the city.
Apparently northern Mosul is also out of control, and the Iraqi government is pledging to bring it back under government authority. There is some connection between that task and coordinating with the local authorities about the October 15 referendum. It is expected that the major Iraqi cities [in the northt] will reject he constitution in this referendum.
A national guard unit from Minnesota in Iraq speaks out about severe sleep deprivation, 60 men doing the work of 120, sand flies, and bitter disillusionment. Most of them seem likely to get out of the National Guard as soon as the Pentagon lifts the "stop-loss" (a.k.a. kidnapping) order that keeps them in past their sign-up period. The level of discontent must be enormous for them to speak to the press despite severe pressure within the military not to do so.
A private company has shut down Baghdad International Airport because it has not been paid for supplying security there. It maintains that the Iraqis cannot provide security to the required standards. As the Iraqis pointed out in response, surely the Iraqi government is sovereign over the airport!
Friday, September 09, 2005
Paging Bob Dole. Mr. Bob Dole, please pick up the white courtesy phone
Bob Dole, 1996: Where is the outrage in America? Where is the outrage in America? Where has the media gone in America? Where is the outrage in America? ……So where's the outrage? Where's the outrage? When--when will the voters start to focus? I think they've started about right now. They've started to focus. This is serious business. This is serious business--this is about the public trust. Remember the public trust? Well, they never understood the public trust. It was always a game with this White House. It was always a game. How far can you push the envelope? How much can you get away with? What can you do?
Still feel that way, Bob? If so, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Bob, you should be outraged. Back in the mid-90s (the years, not your age) you worked yourself into a frenzy over the president's libido and a few files. How does Brownie make you feel, Bob? No fudge or walnuts with this Brownie, but rather a grossly unqualified man whose tenure at the top of a critical agency has cost lives and fortunes. You must be apoplectic by now.
It is remarkable that a man like Michael Brown came anywhere close to this level. First of all, this "lawyer" graduated from an unaccredited law school. Folks, as a graduate of an accredited law school, let me clue you in on our little secret. It isn't that hard to either get into or out of law school (I went to the University of Illinois, a very good law school, did well, the whole law review thing, and graduate school in history was far more difficult, and my wife's MBA work put law school to shame). Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Berkeley, sure, that is a tough road but your average college graduate can easily be admitted into and graduate from America's accredited law schools.
There is one reason and one reason only for someone to go to an unaccredited law school. It's not money or hardship, as the overwhelming majority of the unaccredited institutions are private schools. It means one thing--you couldn't get in anywhere else. Think about that one for a second. The director of FEMA was not qualified for admission to an accredited law school.
And from there, after securing his unaccredited degree, Brownie begins a lifetime of failure that leads to our country entrusting him with the responsibility for its greatest natural disaster. He has an undistinguished career in practice, dismissed from one job after being described as "shallow" and then "asked to resign" from a HORSE SHOW ASSOCIATION amidst lawsuits and claims of mismanagement.
One would think that with a degree that doesn't even allow you to practice in most states and a resume replete with failure that Brownie might end up wearing a bad suit and hanging around traffic court. But Brownie is one of the lucky ones. His old college roomie just happened to be Joe Allbaugh, former FEMA head who left to work to re-"elect" President Chimpy (just to complete the evil circle, Joe is now a lobbyist for, ummm, I forget, what's the name of that company? Oh, I remember, HALLIBURTON!)
The lies on the resume become inconsequential at this point. Yes, he appears to have confused "Outstanding Professor" with "student" in terms of experience, and OK, "Assistant City Manager with Emergency Response Authority" is a little different than "an intern who assisted the city manager, usually getting the number of sugars right." What matters is that even if you take the resume with more padding than an offensive lineman at face value, it is still an embarrassment.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, cronyism costing lives and billions. OK, cronyism is a fact of life, but cronyism gets you an ambassadorship to Luxembourg or simply some nice cash graft, not REAL responsibility. You get to be the U.S. representative to Bermuda, not someone with real work to do! You don't have five of the eight senior FEMA managers have no experience with EMERGENCIES!!
Bob, did you pick up the phone yet?
Are you outraged about the photo ops while people were dying? About the speech plugging the president's shameless war while ignoring the fact that a city was drowning? What about pulling firefighters away from rescue work to be props for your chimera of a president's photo ops as he hunted for a black person to hug?
I am reminded of George O'Leary, who lost a job in disgrace for a tiny fudge on his resume. His job--football coach. Last time I checked, if George wasn't qualified, Notre Dame might lose football games. No death, no destruction, no disaster, just a game, and he was summarily fired.
Oh never mind, Bob. Hang up the white courtesy phone.
Still feel that way, Bob? If so, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
Bob, you should be outraged. Back in the mid-90s (the years, not your age) you worked yourself into a frenzy over the president's libido and a few files. How does Brownie make you feel, Bob? No fudge or walnuts with this Brownie, but rather a grossly unqualified man whose tenure at the top of a critical agency has cost lives and fortunes. You must be apoplectic by now.
It is remarkable that a man like Michael Brown came anywhere close to this level. First of all, this "lawyer" graduated from an unaccredited law school. Folks, as a graduate of an accredited law school, let me clue you in on our little secret. It isn't that hard to either get into or out of law school (I went to the University of Illinois, a very good law school, did well, the whole law review thing, and graduate school in history was far more difficult, and my wife's MBA work put law school to shame). Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Berkeley, sure, that is a tough road but your average college graduate can easily be admitted into and graduate from America's accredited law schools.
There is one reason and one reason only for someone to go to an unaccredited law school. It's not money or hardship, as the overwhelming majority of the unaccredited institutions are private schools. It means one thing--you couldn't get in anywhere else. Think about that one for a second. The director of FEMA was not qualified for admission to an accredited law school.
And from there, after securing his unaccredited degree, Brownie begins a lifetime of failure that leads to our country entrusting him with the responsibility for its greatest natural disaster. He has an undistinguished career in practice, dismissed from one job after being described as "shallow" and then "asked to resign" from a HORSE SHOW ASSOCIATION amidst lawsuits and claims of mismanagement.
One would think that with a degree that doesn't even allow you to practice in most states and a resume replete with failure that Brownie might end up wearing a bad suit and hanging around traffic court. But Brownie is one of the lucky ones. His old college roomie just happened to be Joe Allbaugh, former FEMA head who left to work to re-"elect" President Chimpy (just to complete the evil circle, Joe is now a lobbyist for, ummm, I forget, what's the name of that company? Oh, I remember, HALLIBURTON!)
The lies on the resume become inconsequential at this point. Yes, he appears to have confused "Outstanding Professor" with "student" in terms of experience, and OK, "Assistant City Manager with Emergency Response Authority" is a little different than "an intern who assisted the city manager, usually getting the number of sugars right." What matters is that even if you take the resume with more padding than an offensive lineman at face value, it is still an embarrassment.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, cronyism costing lives and billions. OK, cronyism is a fact of life, but cronyism gets you an ambassadorship to Luxembourg or simply some nice cash graft, not REAL responsibility. You get to be the U.S. representative to Bermuda, not someone with real work to do! You don't have five of the eight senior FEMA managers have no experience with EMERGENCIES!!
Bob, did you pick up the phone yet?
Are you outraged about the photo ops while people were dying? About the speech plugging the president's shameless war while ignoring the fact that a city was drowning? What about pulling firefighters away from rescue work to be props for your chimera of a president's photo ops as he hunted for a black person to hug?
I am reminded of George O'Leary, who lost a job in disgrace for a tiny fudge on his resume. His job--football coach. Last time I checked, if George wasn't qualified, Notre Dame might lose football games. No death, no destruction, no disaster, just a game, and he was summarily fired.
Oh never mind, Bob. Hang up the white courtesy phone.
All units, we have a report of a pants fire....
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!
How Reliable Is Brown's Resume?
By DAREN FONDA AND RITA HEALY
When President Bush nominated Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003, Brown's boss at the time, Joe Allbaugh, declared, "the President couldn't have chosen a better man to help...prepare and protect the nation." But how well was he prepared for the job? Since Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA director has come under heavy criticism for his performance and scrutiny of his background. Now, an investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA. (Brown became Director of FEMA, succeeding Allbaugh, in 2003.)
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."
Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). "He may have been an adjunct instructor," says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of "professor." Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the '70s and '80s, says that Brown "was not on the faculty." As for the honor of "Outstanding Political Science Professor," Johnson says, "I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he's not aware of it." Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean's list or was an "Outstanding Political Science Senior," as is stated on his online profile.
Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. "He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law."
Under the heading of "Professional Associations and Memberships" on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn't find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA's Andrews, Brown said "he's never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home." However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown "was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here."
The FindLaw profile for Brown was amended on Thursday to remove a reference to his tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, which has become a contested point.
Brown's FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown's work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown's boss for two-and-a-half years in the early '80s. "He did mainly transactional work, not litigation," says Jones. "There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow." Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.
How Reliable Is Brown's Resume?
By DAREN FONDA AND RITA HEALY
When President Bush nominated Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2003, Brown's boss at the time, Joe Allbaugh, declared, "the President couldn't have chosen a better man to help...prepare and protect the nation." But how well was he prepared for the job? Since Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA director has come under heavy criticism for his performance and scrutiny of his background. Now, an investigation by TIME has found discrepancies in his online legal profile and official bio, including a description of Brown released by the White House at the time of his nomination in 2001 to the job as deputy chief of FEMA. (Brown became Director of FEMA, succeeding Allbaugh, in 2003.)
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."
In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."
Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). "He may have been an adjunct instructor," says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of "professor." Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the '70s and '80s, says that Brown "was not on the faculty." As for the honor of "Outstanding Political Science Professor," Johnson says, "I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he's not aware of it." Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean's list or was an "Outstanding Political Science Senior," as is stated on his online profile.
Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. "He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law."
Under the heading of "Professional Associations and Memberships" on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn't find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA's Andrews, Brown said "he's never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home." However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown "was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here."
The FindLaw profile for Brown was amended on Thursday to remove a reference to his tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, which has become a contested point.
Brown's FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown's work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown's boss for two-and-a-half years in the early '80s. "He did mainly transactional work, not litigation," says Jones. "There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow." Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Pay me now....
Remember the old Fram oil filter commercial, with the auto mechanic who says "You can pay me now, or pay me later?" The premise was, spend a couple of bucks now on preventive maintenance or pay thousands down the road in repairs.
I really wonder what that "now or later" difference will be in the aftermath of Katrina. Beyond the inestimable value of lives lost and destroyed, what will the final dollar value be? Look at the "pay me now" figure of flood prevention, levee maintenance and effective emergency management as compared to what will be the eventual staggering "pay me later" figure of cleaning up this nightmare.
To this administration, an ounce of prevention is a pound of missed opportunity or....penny wise, Bush foolish!
I really wonder what that "now or later" difference will be in the aftermath of Katrina. Beyond the inestimable value of lives lost and destroyed, what will the final dollar value be? Look at the "pay me now" figure of flood prevention, levee maintenance and effective emergency management as compared to what will be the eventual staggering "pay me later" figure of cleaning up this nightmare.
To this administration, an ounce of prevention is a pound of missed opportunity or....penny wise, Bush foolish!
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Death, Incompetence and Closure
Let's go to the dictionary, shall we?
Our first stop, our old friend, death. We see that death is defined as the act of dying or the termination of life. From there, flip through to "incompetent" and you find that this refers to someone "devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action."
We begin with death, and this story from Reuters. It seems that FEMA can't get a bus or a boat or a helicopter out when it should, but it can get out press releases. In this case, "press release" has a dual meaning, as it is a release not just for the press but directed TO the press.
The Reuters story stated that FEMA, "heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims. An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect. We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media, the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry."
The federal government has requested that the media not cover perhaps the most significant aspect of this story. Death, remember from above, is the act of dying or the termination of life. In this instance, I think the former definition is more applicable. The termination of life sounds official, almost clinical. What happened in New Orleans was the act of dying, an act that was hideous, painful and all too frequent. Desperate people trapped in their homes as they were swallowed by the raging waters, parents who lost a gut-wrenching battle to hold on to their children and elderly men and women who simply could walk no more played out that final act.
The administration does not want us to hear their stories, though, they do not want us to see the images of the final chapter of this storm and their own foolishness and failings and the consequences for so many. It as if these lives actually were not ravaged and destroyed if they keep the horrific pictures from us (pssst...sound familiar?)
Our first stop, our old friend, death. We see that death is defined as the act of dying or the termination of life. From there, flip through to "incompetent" and you find that this refers to someone "devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action."
We begin with death, and this story from Reuters. It seems that FEMA can't get a bus or a boat or a helicopter out when it should, but it can get out press releases. In this case, "press release" has a dual meaning, as it is a release not just for the press but directed TO the press.
The Reuters story stated that FEMA, "heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue boats as they went out to search for storm victims. An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that the recovery of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect. We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media, the spokeswoman said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry."
The federal government has requested that the media not cover perhaps the most significant aspect of this story. Death, remember from above, is the act of dying or the termination of life. In this instance, I think the former definition is more applicable. The termination of life sounds official, almost clinical. What happened in New Orleans was the act of dying, an act that was hideous, painful and all too frequent. Desperate people trapped in their homes as they were swallowed by the raging waters, parents who lost a gut-wrenching battle to hold on to their children and elderly men and women who simply could walk no more played out that final act.
The administration does not want us to hear their stories, though, they do not want us to see the images of the final chapter of this storm and their own foolishness and failings and the consequences for so many. It as if these lives actually were not ravaged and destroyed if they keep the horrific pictures from us (pssst...sound familiar?)
In our daily lives, when we mourn the deaths of those around us, we often view their remains. It is often said that this experience helps confirm the reality and finality of death and allows the sorrows of one to become the sorrows of all. We need to truly know on a very personal level what has happened, not in some distant country, but here in our midst. We need to get our head around it, to grasp its scope, and we need to allow the sorrows of one to become the sorrows of all.
But if we do that, if we understand the tragedy and grieve as a community, we cannot escape that other definition, the definition of incompetence. Remember that one, the one that reads "devoid of those qualities requisite for effective conduct or action?" These images would demand explanation and any explanation necessarily circles back to incompetence.
So to avoid that, the administration draws the curtain, and pretends the final act never occurred. No explanations are necessary, no closure provided and no dealing with those messy definitions. Turn your head, look away and disregard both death and incompetence. But I can't, I just can't....
Fashion Faux Pas
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them."
Apparently someone forgot to remind Barbara Bush that it is gauche to wear white sheets after Labor Day.
Apparently someone forgot to remind Barbara Bush that it is gauche to wear white sheets after Labor Day.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Misunderestimations
Candidate Chimpy said that the media often "misunderestimated" him.
I have been wrong so many times about George W. Bush and the American electorate. I clearly have "misunderestimated" both the body politic and this politician.
In 2000, I was convinced that when he moved beyond southern state primaries onto a national stage that the country would realize there was no "there" there (with apologies to both Gertrude Stein and Oakland!) Well, when that didn't happen, I said, thankfully, there are still the debates, and.... that didn't work. Ah, but wait, I said, a vigilant, independent press will surely do their job to excuse the failings, foibles and frauds of this grotesque caricature of a candidate…hmm, no.
Even after the debacle of the 2000 election, the theft of Florida and a Supreme Court decision so flawed that they won’t even allow it to be cited as precedent, I once again misunderestimated the situation. I thought that OK, we were screwed, but how bad could it be? We’ll lose the protections of some EPA rules and see a couple of wackos named to the federal bench, but we’re a resilient country, we’ll get by.
Comment Piece in Today's Financial Times
Tragic costs of Bush’s Iraq obsession
By Michael Lind
Published: September 5 2005 21:17 Last updated: September 5 2005 21:17
By Michael Lind
Published: September 5 2005 21:17 Last updated: September 5 2005 21:17
Samuel Huntington has called it the Lippmann Gap, echoing the American journalist Walter Lippmann in 1943: “Foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” The historian Paul Kennedy has another name for it: “Imperial overextension”. Whatever you call this dangerous disease, the symptoms are clear in the US.
In early 2001, shortly after President George W. Bush was inaugurated and before 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned of the three most devastating disasters that could strike the US: a terrorist attack on New York City, a hurricane flooding New Orleans and a San Francisco earthquake. The Bush administration was focused on its priority: Iraq.
The first foreseen disaster took place on September 11 2001, when al-Qaeda flew hijacked jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The federal government was taken by surprise. New York City’s first responders were hampered by communications problems and poor planning for this long-predicted event. The Bush administration’s response to the mass murder committed by al-Qaeda was warped by the focus on Iraq. Many in Washington believe that the administration failed to send sufficient troops to Afghanistan because it was with-holding forces for the invasion of Iraq.
Day after day, the levees of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans and the wetlands that protected the city were eroding. Mr Bush and his allies in the Republican-majority Congress have slashed federal spending for flood control in south-east Louisiana by half and funds for work at Lake Pontchartrain by almost two-thirds. From 2003, funds authorised for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project were diverted to pay for the war in Iraq. Earlier this year, the US Army Corps of Engineers requested $27m (€21.6m) to repair the levees to protect them from hurricanes. Mr Bush sought to cut the amount to $3.9m and also proposed reducing spending to prevent flooding from $78m to $30m (the Republican Congress ultimately passed $5.7m and $36.5m, respectively). The New Orleans Times-Picayune published numerous articles warning that the war in Iraq was taking money away from hurricane protection on the Gulf coast.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the insurgency metastasised. With US forces divided between the necessary war in Afghanistan and the war of choice in Iraq, and army recruitment numbers plunging, the Bush administration, in addition to hiring private contractors, was forced to mobilise National Guard reserves overseas. When Katrina struck, tens of thousands of National Guard soldiers were in Iraq, along with much of the equipment needed for disaster relief.
At the same time, America’s long border with Mexico has gone largely unprotected. Around a million illegal immigrants are apprehended each year, in addition to the estimated half a million who join the roughly 10m living in the US. A growing number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border are from Middle Eastern countries including Egypt, Yemen, Iraq and Syria. President Bush’s justice department claims that suspected American terrorist Jose Padilla and an accomplice planned to enter the US through Mexico and blow up buildings in New York and other cities. Mohammed Junaid Babar, an alleged al-Qaeda agent linked with plots against London, has told US investigators of a plan to bring terrorists into the US from Mexico.
On December 17 2004, Mr Bush signed the National Intelligence Reform Act, which required the addition of 10,000 border patrol agents beginning in 2006. In his February 2005 budget, however, Mr Bush authorised funds for only 210 new border agents. Last month, the Democratic governors of Arizona and New Mexico asked for federal disaster relief to help deal with border chaos.
The horror in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, and the chaos along the US-Mexican border, join anarchy in Afghanistan and Iraq as proof of the bankruptcy of the Bush doctrine. Mr Bush’s neoconservative strategists wanted a crusade for US hegemony in the Middle East and the world; as “national greatness conservatives,” some might have been willing to pay for it with higher taxes. But Mr Bush’s political base consists of conservatives and libertarians united by a crusade to cut taxes. The attempt to establish American global hegemony without paying for it was a disaster – actually, several disasters – waiting to happen.
If, early in 2001, the Bush administration had focused on al-Qaeda instead of Iraq, it might have responded to FEMA’s call to prepare New York for a big terrorist incident. If it had not divided US forces to fight two wars at once, Afghanistan might have been pacified while Saddam remained in power but contained. If Bush had not sacrificed border security to pay for the war in Iraq, the Mexican border might be under control. If Bush had not diverted so many National Guard units to Iraq, disaster relief following Hurricane Katrina would have been swifter and more effective. And if the war in Iraq had not caused the Bush administration to raid money for the New Orleans levees, this big port city might not be a corpse-filled cesspool.
Supporters of the war in Iraq predicted that the dominos would fall in the Middle East. Instead, the dominos are falling across America.
The writer is Whitehead Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation
Monday, September 05, 2005
A personal note to Susan Petrarca of Lemont, Illinois
Susan wrote a letter to the editor published in today's Chicago Tribune. She describes how her brother is likely to be deployed to the Middle East in October. She proceeds to rant that "if anything should happen to my brother, I'll blame the Cindy Sheehan contingent. And I'll be more than happy to tell her to her face." She then adds about how she is one of "those of us who support the struggle for a constitutional democracy in Iraq."
Pssst, Susan--that struggle is over. There is no "constitutional democracy" in Iraq. The Iraqi people didn't want it and George W. Bush certainly didn't care about it. Your brother will be supporting the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic client state of Iran. I applaud his service and hope for his safety, but please know that the "anti-war" left cares far more about your brother and his comrades-in-arms than does your president.
As for dissent, nothing is more fundamentally American. I always think of a young man from Illinois by way of Kentucky and Indiana. While in Congress, he voted for a resolution that said that the war "was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president." He basically called the president a liar, stating that "the result of this examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all the president states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification and that the president would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him." Finally, he even got a bit personal, saying that the president's speech calling for war sounded like "half-insane mumbling."
He says that the president kept changing his reasons for war, as he "first he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off." Again, he takes to insulting the intellectual capacity of the president, as he describes how "his mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease."
The young man is also concerned about how the president reacts to criticism and won't listen to his generals. He notes that the president fails to state when he "expects the war to terminate." Generals were "by this same president driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months...... the president gives us a long message, without showing us that as to the end he himself has even an imaginary conception."
He wraps up with one last insult, as he states that the president "knows not where he is, as he is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man."
Downright un-American you say? Well, I wonder what ever became of that young man so critical of the president and war--that Abraham Lincoln fellow.
Pssst, Susan--that struggle is over. There is no "constitutional democracy" in Iraq. The Iraqi people didn't want it and George W. Bush certainly didn't care about it. Your brother will be supporting the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic client state of Iran. I applaud his service and hope for his safety, but please know that the "anti-war" left cares far more about your brother and his comrades-in-arms than does your president.
As for dissent, nothing is more fundamentally American. I always think of a young man from Illinois by way of Kentucky and Indiana. While in Congress, he voted for a resolution that said that the war "was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the president." He basically called the president a liar, stating that "the result of this examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all the president states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification and that the president would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him." Finally, he even got a bit personal, saying that the president's speech calling for war sounded like "half-insane mumbling."
He says that the president kept changing his reasons for war, as he "first he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out of it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off." Again, he takes to insulting the intellectual capacity of the president, as he describes how "his mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease."
The young man is also concerned about how the president reacts to criticism and won't listen to his generals. He notes that the president fails to state when he "expects the war to terminate." Generals were "by this same president driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months...... the president gives us a long message, without showing us that as to the end he himself has even an imaginary conception."
He wraps up with one last insult, as he states that the president "knows not where he is, as he is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man."
Downright un-American you say? Well, I wonder what ever became of that young man so critical of the president and war--that Abraham Lincoln fellow.
Life and Death in New Orleans
Let me begin by saying that despite my rather obvious political leanings, I take no joy from the failings of the administration. I wanted them to do well here, I wanted them to succeed, I wanted them to save New Orleans.
I hoped that a prepared and effective response would blunt nature's wrath for many reasons. The most basic of course was the fundamental human desire to avoid suffering and loss of life. The second was a fear, now realized, that the storm could produce an environmental catastrophe and severe economic disruption.
The third reason, though, was simple and essentially selfish. I love New Orleans and I did not want to see it washed away. I have only been there once, but the city is one of those uniquely American places that has a hold on even those who have never been there. Like New York, where we want to be a part of it, and San Francisco, where we leave our hearts, we always wanted to ride The City of New Orleans to this vibrant spot.
This city was in a way a "melting pot" before that term was generally applied to the country, but a truly unique pot it was. The various components, from all parts of Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, kept their unique identities while creating an urban culture like nowhere else. We know New Orleans from Mardi Gras and Anne Rice, from taking A Streetcar Named Desire, from football games to funerals both sad and joyous, from hearing Dixieland jazz and tasting gumbo and jambalaya. In a way, New Orleans felt like it belonged to all of us.
I remember walking down to Cafe DuMonde while the city that had been out too late the night before still slept. In this city of contrasts, around the corner from the garishness of Bourbon Street, you could find a tiny bookstore that would welcome you in to see and touch rare maps and manuscripts. Here a vibrant African-American culture emerged in the shadows of the slave market, and in St. Louis Cemetery #1, you could see the busy, urban city of the living rising above the whitewashed walls of the city of the dead. Now, so much of that is lost.
I do not expect the federal government to solve every problem and I realize that governments are made up of fallible human beings. Those human beings are charged with duties and responsibilities, and what we have seen in the last week is a gross dereliction of those duties that is criminal in its scope. At the head of the agency charged with emergency management, we have not a professional with emergency response experience but a political hack previously fired for mismanagement in heading up horse shows! And now, after failing to be both proactive and reactive, the administration chooses now to deflect criticism and blame others.
I had hoped for so much more.
I hoped that a prepared and effective response would blunt nature's wrath for many reasons. The most basic of course was the fundamental human desire to avoid suffering and loss of life. The second was a fear, now realized, that the storm could produce an environmental catastrophe and severe economic disruption.
The third reason, though, was simple and essentially selfish. I love New Orleans and I did not want to see it washed away. I have only been there once, but the city is one of those uniquely American places that has a hold on even those who have never been there. Like New York, where we want to be a part of it, and San Francisco, where we leave our hearts, we always wanted to ride The City of New Orleans to this vibrant spot.
This city was in a way a "melting pot" before that term was generally applied to the country, but a truly unique pot it was. The various components, from all parts of Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere, kept their unique identities while creating an urban culture like nowhere else. We know New Orleans from Mardi Gras and Anne Rice, from taking A Streetcar Named Desire, from football games to funerals both sad and joyous, from hearing Dixieland jazz and tasting gumbo and jambalaya. In a way, New Orleans felt like it belonged to all of us.
I remember walking down to Cafe DuMonde while the city that had been out too late the night before still slept. In this city of contrasts, around the corner from the garishness of Bourbon Street, you could find a tiny bookstore that would welcome you in to see and touch rare maps and manuscripts. Here a vibrant African-American culture emerged in the shadows of the slave market, and in St. Louis Cemetery #1, you could see the busy, urban city of the living rising above the whitewashed walls of the city of the dead. Now, so much of that is lost.
I do not expect the federal government to solve every problem and I realize that governments are made up of fallible human beings. Those human beings are charged with duties and responsibilities, and what we have seen in the last week is a gross dereliction of those duties that is criminal in its scope. At the head of the agency charged with emergency management, we have not a professional with emergency response experience but a political hack previously fired for mismanagement in heading up horse shows! And now, after failing to be both proactive and reactive, the administration chooses now to deflect criticism and blame others.
I had hoped for so much more.
Sunday, September 04, 2005
Who is Mark Silva?
[Note: Mr. Silva did have different co-authors for each article, but he is the common thread]
And why does he have a job at a major newspaper (The Chicago Tribune) ? The man is a hack and a shameless shill for the Bush administration. How does he sleep at night?
I have already pointed out his earlier "journalistic" assessment of the president's "swift" and "personal" response to the crisis in the Gulf Coast. Here is the president's "swift" response:
While this was the scene on that very day in New Orleans:
And why does he have a job at a major newspaper (The Chicago Tribune) ? The man is a hack and a shameless shill for the Bush administration. How does he sleep at night?
I have already pointed out his earlier "journalistic" assessment of the president's "swift" and "personal" response to the crisis in the Gulf Coast. Here is the president's "swift" response:
While this was the scene on that very day in New Orleans:
On this morning's front page, Mark outdoes himself. He describes the president as a man "who honed his credentials as a manager of unimaginable crisis in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001."
Really, Mark? Crisis manager?
I seem to remember a dazed and baffled man looking lost among the school children while the mayor of New York showed what crisis management really meant. I remember a useless figurehead being flown about the country and hiding from view that day while America reeled, and finally, I recall a blinking, nervous, overgrown child overwhelmed by his accidental presidency. He stared into the camera that night with a face that so clearly said that this was the wrong man at the wrong time.
Hi Mark, I'd like to introduce you to Journalistic Integrity. Journalistic Integrity, this is Mark. I'm sure you two have never met before.
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