I'm Just F'in Sayin'

(If) "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

Link posted by Krup @ 5:25 PM 2 comments

Arnold Schwarzenegger terminates gay marriage bill

California's embattled movie star governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, formally vetoed a landmark law that would have legalized gay marriage in the Golden state.

The action hero, known for his support of gay rights, scuppered the bill which was approved by California's legislature early this month. The issue should be decided by voters or the courts, not by new legislation, he said.

"This bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue," Schwarzenegger said in a statement explaining why he returned the bill without his signature.

"If the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, this bill is not necessary. If the ban is constitutional, this bill is ineffective," he said.

Link posted by Krup @ 10:55 AM 2 comments

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

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

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

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

Link posted by Krup @ 5:05 PM 1 comments

"Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general."

Link posted by Krup @ 1:25 PM 0 comments

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist faces a near-term ordeal unwelcome to anyone, particularly an ambitious politician: an official probe into his personal financial dealings by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission...

The Department of Justice is also investigating the matter. HCA said Sept. 23 that it received a subpoena from the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and Frist said he will cooperate with the prosecutor's office. HCA also said it ``intends to cooperate fully.''

Link posted by Krup @ 1:17 PM 0 comments

"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has been indicted on one count of criminal conspiracy...

House GOP rules require any member of the elected leadership to step down temporarily if indicted, and it would be up to the rank and file to select an interim replacement."

Link posted by Krup @ 12:38 PM 0 comments

"It's a good thing we're alcoholics and not raging alcoholics."

Link posted by Krup @ 10:25 AM 0 comments

When Maggie comes down with the chicken pox, Homer actually takes some advice from Flanders and holds a "pox party" so his friends could have their kids infected. After one too many Marge-aritas, Kirk and Luanne van Houten decide to get back together. However, Milhouse realizes they're too interested in each other and not interested in him, so he tries to break them up by planting a bra in his parents' bedroom. One problem: Luanne discovers it's Marge's bra, which leads to Homer and Marge breaking up yet again.

Lisa to Homer & Marge: "What exactly happened between the two of you?"

Bart: "Lisa, we don't need to know how. It's a natural thing that happens, like a hurricane or going to war."

(Lisa glowers at Bart)

Link posted by Krup @ 11:56 AM 2 comments

Nearly four weeks after Hurricane Katrina displaced more Americans from their homes than any event in at least 60 years, efforts to find housing for 200,000 families along the devastated Gulf Coast are bogging down, according to federal, state and private sector officials.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials complain of a drastic shortage of sites suitable to state and local officials for the huge trailer parks FEMA hopes to establish for evacuees.

Local and parish leaders say FEMA's plans to supply the trailer parks with water, sewer, electricity and other services are haphazard or nonexistent, and the encampments, some of which could include 15,000 units, are bigger than any the agency has ever established...

"We seem to be in this new state of chaos," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. "Nobody's on message because everybody's got their own message"...

Federal officials told Congress on Sept. 8 that as many as 1 million people were displaced by the storm and 450,000 families were homeless, numbers that echo assumptions in a FEMA hurricane planning exercise last year.

In reality the numbers are far more murky. FEMA now estimates that about 300,000 families are displaced and expects 200,000 will be unable to find temporary housing on their own, said Jim McIntyre, FEMA's chief housing spokesman.

Those left behind are among the least self-sufficient. Surveys of evacuees in Houston show that roughly two-thirds do not have bank accounts, credit cards or insurance, most had family incomes of less than $20,000 and half have children under 18.

To house them, FEMA has ordered 125,000 trailers that it planned to deploy as close as possible to affected cities, following a playbook the agency relied on after four Florida hurricanes and its New Orleans exercise last year...

As of Tuesday, FEMA had 1,825 trailers in the region.

But in Baton Rouge and Washington, some state and federal officials say FEMA's reliance on trailers is increasingly unpopular at all levels of government and both political parties.

Some are alarmed at reports that FEMA trailer cities in Florida have regressed into "ghettos of despair," in Newt Gingrich's words, with high rates of poverty, crime and social strain.

Link posted by Krup @ 12:48 PM 2 comments

"We as families of soldiers who have died as a result of war are organizing to be a positive force in our world to bring our country’s sons and daughters home from Iraq, to minimize the “human cost” of this war, and to prevent other families from the pain we are feeling as the result of our losses."

Link posted by Krup @ 3:37 PM 2 comments

THE PRESIDENT: Bianca. Nobody named Bianca? Well, sorry Bianca's not here. I'll be glad to answer her question.

Q I'll follow up.

THE PRESIDENT: No, that's fine. (Laughter.) Thank you though, appreciate it. Just trying to spread around the joy of asking a question.

[snip]

Q Mr. President, could we talk more about --

THE PRESIDENT: Are you Bianca?

Q No, I'm not. Anita -- Fox News.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay.

Q Just a quick question --

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. I was looking for Bianca. I'm sorry.

Link posted by Krup @ 1:27 PM 0 comments

Thousands of furious evacuees sweltering for hours on traffic-choked freeways
Thursday put a stain on what had been a generally successful response by state and local governments faced with back-to-back weather emergencies in Texas.

"This was not in the plan," County Judge Robert Eckels said, turning away from the lectern after a news briefing dominated by questions about the gridlock that resulted from the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita...

"The number of people, the amount of cars, the amount of compliance with this (evacuation order), there's some things you can predict and some things you can't, that are unpredictable," (state emergency operations center coordinator Jack) Colley said. "We are compensating. They may run out of gas, but we're going to get them gas."

"It has been completely predictable. You try to shove all that traffic onto a freeway system, and it ain't going to work. There's only so much roadway," said Bill King, a lawyer and former Kemah mayor who's long said the region wasn't adequately prepared for a large-scale evacuation.

"All this about the running out of gas? Well, duh," King said.

- Houston is the largest city within the state of Texas, fourth in the United States, and the second-largest economic area of the Gulf Coast region.

- Population (entire metro area): 5,180,443

Link posted by Krup @ 11:10 AM 0 comments

BUSH'S BOOZE CRISIS

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

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

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

His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against "falling off the wagon" and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

Link posted by Krup @ 3:09 PM 0 comments

Sen. Reid Says He'll Vote Against Roberts

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he would oppose confirmation of Chief Justice-nominee John Roberts, questioning Roberts' commitment to civil rights and accusing the Bush administration of stonewalling requests for documents that might shed light on his views.

At the same time, Reid readily predicted Roberts will win Senate confirmation, coupling the forecast with a warning of sorts to President Bush as he considers candidates for a second vacancy on the Supreme Court. "No one should think that just automatically they're all going to be easy like this one," he said...

"This is a very close question for me. But I must resolve my doubts in favor of the American people whose rights would be in jeopardy if John Roberts turned out to be the wrong person for the job," he said.

Referring to publicly released memos that date to Robert's tenure as a Reagan administration lawyer, Reid said they showed the young attorney "played a significant role in shaping and advancing the Republican agenda to roll back civil rights protections."

"No one suggests that John Roberts was motivated by bigotry or animosity toward minorities or women," Reid added. "But these memos lead one to question whether he truly appreciated the history of the civil rights struggle. He wrote about discrimination as an abstract concept, not as a flesh and blood reality for countless of his fellow citizens."

Reid also said Roberts followed a "disingenuous strategy" at the confirmation hearings of suggesting that the views in the memos were not his own.

Democrats have tried without success to persuade the administration to release documents from Roberts' tenure as principal deputy solicitor general, a senior Justice Department job he held in the administration of the first President Bush.

"The failure of the White House to produce relevant documents is reason enough for any senator to oppose this nomination. The administration cannot treat the Senate with such disrespect without some consequences," Reid said.

Link posted by Krup @ 7:08 PM 1 comments

An enormous pink bunny has been erected on an Italian mountainside where it will stay for the next 20 years.

The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy's Piedmont region.

Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool".

Group member Wolfgang Gantner said: "It's supposed to make you feel small, like Gulliver. You walk around it and you can't help but smile."

And Gelatin members say the bunny is not just for walking around - they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly.

The giant rabbit is expected to remain on the mountain side until 2025.

Link posted by Krup @ 1:11 PM 2 comments

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.

The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.

"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."

Link posted by Krup @ 10:38 AM 0 comments

Once Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.

The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.

Link posted by Krup @ 8:04 PM 1 comments

In the months before Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush sought to cut a key program to help local governments raise their preparedness, and state officials warned of a "total lack of focus" on natural disasters by his homeland-security chief, documents show.

The disclosures add to questions over the administration's emergency-response planning, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's priorities and the way the White House budgets for disaster preparedness after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Organizations representing emergency-response and security officials at state and local agencies had complained of funding shortages and what they saw as an excessive shift by the Homeland Security Department away from preparing for natural disasters, as it focused increasingly on terrorism.

In July, the National Emergency Management Association wrote lawmakers expressing "grave" concern that still-pending changes proposed by Chertoff would undercut the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

"Our primary concern relates to the total lack of focus on natural-hazards preparedness," David Liebersbach, the association's president, said in the July 27 letter to Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, the leaders of a key Senate committee overseeing the agency.

He said Chertoff's emphasis on terrorism "indicates that FEMA's long-standing mission of preparedness for all types of disasters has been forgotten at DHS."

FEMA, formerly a cabinet-level agency, was folded into the new Homeland Security Department as part of a major government reorganization after the September 11 attacks. The agency has borne the brunt of criticism over the delays and problems in responding to Katrina, and its head, Michael Brown, resigned after being removed from the recovery effort.

Link posted by Krup @ 7:30 PM 11 comments

On Monday, Sept. 19, NYTimes.com will launch a new subscription service, TimesSelect, an important step in the development of The New York Times.

If a man-bites-dog story is news and dog-bites-man isn't, why are journalists still so interested in man-blows-up-self stories?

I realize that we have a duty to report suicide bombings in the Middle East, especially when there's a spate as bad as in recent weeks. And I know the old rule of television news: if it bleeds, it leads. But I'm still puzzled by our zeal in frantically competing to get gruesome pictures and details for broadcasts and front pages.

During the past decade I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of articles on suicide bombings, but I read to the end of just three of them, and that was only because I wrote them. Those bombings occurred in Baghdad and Kurdistan during the summer of 2003, when they were still a novel phenomenon in Iraq, but even then there was really nothing new to say.

As I intruded on grieving relatives at the scene and wounded survivors in hospitals, I didn't see what good I was doing for anyone except the planners of the attack. It was a horrifying story, but it was same story as every other suicide bombing, from the descriptions of the carnage and the mayhem to the quotes from eyewitnesses and the authorities.

(snip)

I suspect the public would welcome a respite from gore, like the one that New Yorkers got when Rudolph Giuliani became mayor. He realized that even though crime was declining in the city, people's fears were being stoked by the relentless tabloid and television coverage of the day's most grisly crime. No matter how much the felony rate dropped, in a city of seven million there would always be at least one crime scene for a live shot at the top of the 11 o'clock news.

Mr. Giuliani told the police to stop giving out details of daily crime in time for reporters' deadlines, a policy that prompted outrage from the press but not many complaints from the public. With the lessening of the daily media barrage, New Yorkers began to be less scared and more realistic about the risks on their streets.

I'm not advocating official censorship, but there's no reason the news media can't reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world's dangers.

Link posted by Krup @ 2:34 PM 5 comments

“Leadership isn’t a speech or a toll-free number. Leadership is getting the job done. No American doubts that New Orleans will rise again, they doubt the competence and commitment of this Administration. Weeks after Katrina, Americans want an end to politics-as-usual that leaves them dangerously and unforgivably unprepared. Americans want to know that their government will be there when it counts with leadership that keeps them safe, not speeches in the aftermath to explain away the inexcusable.”

Today, the Senate passed a bill that will aid Small Businesses affected by Hurricane Katrina. That bill was authored by John Kerry.

Bush spoke of aiding Small Business tonight in his speech, as though it was something he would initiate, but the fact is that John Kerry has been working on aid to Small Businesses affected by Katrina for well over a week. Kerry’s first announcement of his legislation came on September 9. The bill was passed in the Senate with bi-partisan support and some modifications earlier today.

Perhaps, Bush needs a DVD prepared of the proceedings on the Senate floor today. I would suggest that the video of Kerry’s Floor Speech on his amendment, from yesterday, be added to that video as well, so that the President can get up to speed on how real leaders work.

Link posted by Krup @ 12:00 PM 31 comments

American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found.

The White House and many members of the commission, which has completed its official work, have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures, which was completed in August 2004.

A heavily redacted version was released by the Bush administration in January, but commission members complained that the deleted material contained information critical to the public's understanding of what went wrong on Sept. 11. In response, the administration prepared a new public version of the report, which was posted Tuesday on the National Archives Web site.

Link posted by Krup @ 9:49 AM 0 comments

A lawyer who is vice chairman of the (Massachusetts) Republican Party was charged Tuesday with money-laundering for allegedly offering to "cleanse" drug proceeds for a client.

Lawrence Novak was arrested at his home in Brockton after investigators said he allegedly offered to launder drug profits for a man who is awaiting trial on federal trafficking charges and who has agreed to be a cooperating witness against Novak.

Republican Party Executive Director Tim O'Brien said the charges are unrelated to Novak's GOP role.

Link posted by Krup @ 9:21 AM 2 comments

"I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy."

- George W. Bush defending his decision not to meet with Cindy Sheehan during his record-breaking five week vacation (two weeks before Hurricane Katrina).

Link posted by Krup @ 9:09 AM 1 comments

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

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

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

The federal budget, already a mess before Katrina, is now a laughable document. Those who call for yet more tax cuts risk sounding like robots droning automated talking points programmed inside them long ago. Katrina has forced the issue of deep poverty back onto the national agenda after a long absence. Finding a way forward in -- and eventually out of -- Iraq will require creativity from those not implicated in the administration's mistakes. And if ever the phrase "reinventing government" had relevance, it is now that we have observed the performance of a government that allows political hacks to push aside the professionals.

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

Link posted by Krup @ 5:39 PM 5 comments

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do it's job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong."

Link posted by Krup @ 12:44 PM 0 comments

"Give me a pretend cowboy over an actual rapist any day."

Link posted by Krup @ 10:25 AM 4 comments

1) "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." –President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

2) "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them." –Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005

3) "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level....It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed." –House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Aug. 31, 2005

4) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do ... The good news is — and it's hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house — he's lost his entire house — there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) —President Bush, touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

5) "Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

6) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." –President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

7) "I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." –Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005

8) "Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, 'New Orleans Dodged the Bullet.' Because if you recall, the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse." –Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, blaming media coverage for his failings, "Meet the Press," Sept. 4, 2005

9) "I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.” –Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005

10) "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals...many of these people, almost all of them that we see are so poor and they are so black, and this is going to raise lots of questions for people who are watching this story unfold." –CNN's Wolf Blitzer, on New Orleans' hurricane evacuees, Sept. 1, 2005

11) "What didn't go right?'" –President Bush, as quoted by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), after she urged him to fire FEMA Director Michael Brown "because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right" in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort

12) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" –House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston

13)"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." –Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

14) "Louisiana is a city that is largely under water." –Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, news conference, Sept. 3, 2005

15) "I also want to encourage anybody who was affected by Hurricane Corina to make sure their children are in school." –First Lady Laura Bush, twice referring to a "Hurricane Corina" while speaking to children and parents in South Haven, Mississippi, Sept. 8, 2005

16) "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." –President Bush, turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One, Aug. 31, 2005

17) "I believe the town where I used to come – from Houston, Texas, to enjoy myself, occasionally too much – will be that very same town, that it will be a better place to come to." –President Bush, on the tarmac at the New Orleans airport, Sept. 2, 2005

18) "Last night, we showed you the full force of a superpower government going to the rescue." –MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Sept. 1, 2005

19) "You know I talked to Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi yesterday because some people were saying, 'Well, if you hadn't sent your National Guard to Iraq, we here in Mississippi would be better off.' He told me 'I've been out in the field every single day, hour, for four days and no one, not one single mention of the word Iraq.' Now where does that come from? Where does that story come from if the governor is not picking up one word about it? I don't know. I can use my imagination." –Former President George Bush, who can give his imagination a rest, interview with CNN’s Larry King, Sept. 5, 2005

20) "We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded " Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today."

21) "I don't want to alarm everybody that, you know, New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That's just not happening." -Bill Lokey, FEMA's New Orleans coordinator, in a press briefing from Baton Rouge, Aug. 30, 2005

22) "FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm. We are not going to sit back and make this a bureaucratic process. We are going to move fast, we are going to move quick, and we are going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims." --FEMA Director Michael Brown, Aug. 28, 2005

23) "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, arguing that the victims bear some responsibility, CNN interview, Sept. 1, 2005

24) "I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen." --GOP strategist Jack Burkman, on MSNBC's "Connected," Sept. 7, 2005

25) "Thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reid for their extraordinary efforts. Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard – maybe you all have announced it -- but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating." –Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), to CNN's Anderson Cooper, Aug. 31, 2005, to which Cooper responded:

"I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap – you know, thanking one another, it just, you know, it kind of cuts them the wrong way right now, because literally there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. And there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

"This is the largest disaster in the history of the United States, over an area twice the size of Europe. People have to understand this is a big, big problem.'' –Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Sept. 6, 2005

"A young [black] man walks through chest deep floodwater after looting a grocery store in New Orleans..."
"Two [white] residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans..." –captions at Yahoo News, Aug. 30, 2005

"But I really didn't hear that at all today. People came up to me all day long and said 'God bless your son,' people of different races and it was very, very moving and touching, and they felt like when he flew over that it made all the difference in their lives, so I just don't hear that." –Former First Lady Barbara Bush to CNN's Larry King, after King asked her how she felt when people said that her son "doesn't care" about race, Sept. 5, 2005

"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." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, on his plans after being relieved from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, Sept. 9, 2005

"Judge Roberts can, maybe, you know, be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good." –Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, arguing that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts stands to benefit from Hurricane Katrina because "inflamed rhetoric in the United States Senate is just not going to play well now," Sept. 1, 2005

"Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people." –President Bush, Sept. 6, 2005

"Louisiana's Senator Landrieu announced on network television, 'I might likely have to punch him, literally.' And my question, since 'him' is the President, and both punching and threatening to punch the President is a felony, has her qualifying words 'might likely' saved her from arrest and prosecution?" -unknown reporter to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Sept. 6, 2005

"As of Saturday (Sept. 3), Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said." –Washington Post staff writers Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu, who didn't bother to fact-check the blatant lie peddled by the Bush administration as part of its attempts to pin blame on state and local officials, when, in fact, the emergency declaration had been made on Friday, Aug. 26

"Just to get you on the record, where does the buck stop in this administration?" –White House reporter
"The President." –White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Sept. 6, 2005

Link posted by Krup @ 3:12 PM 13 comments

Here's Bill O'Reilly, a man who, no matter what, needs to be sodomized with a microphone, finding the kernel of truth in his crazed bellicosity on the poor left behind to drown in New Orleans: "If you do not educate yourself or develop a marketable skill, the chances are you will be poor and powerless." When George Will, who ought to have a bow-tie wound around his nutsack, said that to avoid poverty, the poor need to avoid having out-of-wedlock children, avoid getting married before 20, and graduate from high school, Will is not saying anything that liberal sociologists haven't been saying for years. Hell, devoid of context, O'Reilly and Will sound like Black Panthers from back in the day. Raise a fist, motherfuckers.

Link posted by Krup @ 1:57 PM 0 comments

It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

The president did not growl this time. He had already decided to return to Washington and hold a meeting of his top advisers on the following day, Wednesday. This would give them a day to get back from their vacations and their staffs to work up some ideas about what to do in the aftermath of the storm.

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

Link posted by Krup @ 10:55 AM 7 comments

"Our greatest resource in such times is the compassionate character of the American people, because even the most destructive storm cannot weaken the heart and soul of our nation" - More b.s. from Bush's weekly radio address

"This year, Republicans in Congress cut first-responder homeland security programs by $604 million, and an additional cut of $1.1 billion was requested by the president for fiscal year 2006," (Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss) said.

"This is funding for resources on the local level to defend our families, protect our communities and respond during times of crisis. Diminishing the ability of our sheriffs, police, firefighters and all first responders to get the job done is simply unacceptable."

Al Gore helped airlift some 270 Katrina evacuees on two private charters from New Orleans, acting at the urging of a doctor who saved the life of the former vice president's son.

Gore criticized the Bush administration's slow response to Katrina in a speech Friday in San Francisco, but refused to be interviewed about the mercy missions he financed and flew on September 3 and 4.

However, Dr. Anderson Spickard, who is Gore's personal physician and accompanied him on the flights, said: "Gore told me he wanted to do this because like all of us he wanted to seize the opportunity to do what one guy can do, given the assets that he has."

Link posted by Krup @ 1:31 PM 1 comments

Analysis Sees Deficits Growing Under Bush

Even before the cost of Hurricane Katrina is added to the federal ledger, a Congressional Budget Office study commissioned by Democrats predicts President Bush will fail to keep his promise to cut the deficit in half by the time he leaves office.

The study by the nonpartisan CBO assumes that Congress will heed Bush's call for new tax cuts and for making those passed in 2001 and 2003 permanent. It also assumes a big slowdown in spending on the Iraq war, tight caps on domestic agency budgets and new individual Social Security accounts...

The study predicts that the $331 billion budget deficit projected for the current budget year would rise to $370 billion by 2009, the year Bush has promised to cut the deficit to at least $260 billion. Bush promised to cut the deficit in half from a projection in February 2004 of a $521 billion deficit for 2009.

By 2015, the deficit would hit $640 billion under CBO's study.

"Instead of complaining about the deficit, how about doing something about it?" said Bush spokesman Trent Duffy...

Link posted by Krup @ 1:23 PM 0 comments

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

"We have had our first post 9/11 test and we have miserably failed."

Link posted by Krup @ 1:16 PM 0 comments

"It appears to me that the lesson that the Bush administration took from 9/11 was that we needed to prevent terrorists from ever hijacking airplanes and flying them into the world trade center again. I think we can feel confident that that will not happen again. After all, there is no world trade center to fly into."

Link posted by Krup @ 7:51 PM 0 comments

The number of dead in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina may not be as high as first feared, the top Homeland Security official there said on Friday.

"There's some encouragement in the initial sweeps. Some of the catastrophic deaths some people have predicted may not have occurred," Col. Terry Ebbert, director of Homeland Security for the city of New Orleans said at a news conference.

"The numbers so far are relatively minor as compared with the dire predictions of 10,000."

Link posted by Krup @ 1:49 PM 3 comments

"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun - for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax - This won't hurt."

- Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note to his wife Anita

"Football Season Is Over"

Link posted by Krup @ 3:35 PM 2 comments

...after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project) dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain...

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness.

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

Link posted by Krup @ 2:50 PM 22 comments

So this guy walks into a talent agency and says to the agent, "Have I got an act for you! It's a family act, you'll love it."

The agent says "Alright, lay it on me."

The guy says, "Well, first the grandpa comes in, this is in the thirties, mind, deals with the Nazis and makes a ton of money off German banking and mining, see. He gets nailed for trading with the enemy in the war, but it doesn't matter much cause by now his family is incredibly wealthy. His son, the Father, flies a plane in the Second World War and later becomes head of the CIA, then later, vice president, and after that, a one term president.



He does a half ass job and gets out, kinda sets things up for later. It's the kid, he's the real lynchpin of the act. It gets better."

The agent nods, doodling on his dayplanner. "Please, continue."

"The kid comes in, and starts off with avoiding Vietnam by getting a nice position in the National Guard, see? But he skips out on that gig when he doesn't need it anymore. Then he runs a series of businesses into the ground. He can't run an oil company, he can't manage a baseball team, tries to run for Congress and fails, he does drugs and boozes, has trouble with basic life skills. But since his daddy's Vice President, or later, President, he gets whatever he wants. Gets bailed out every time. He runs for governor of Texas and wins, and sets a new record for executing people. He likes to joke about the executions, too, mocking the pleas for leniency. 150-odd prisoners go to the chair under the Kid as governor. And the Kid is wearing a cowboy hat and talking in a Texas drawl the whole time, even though he's from Connecticut. But it gets better, this is just the start."

The agent nods, dropping his pen. "Umm.. alright.."

"The Kid doesn't just wanna be a governor, he wants to be President. So he runs for President and.. tough luck, he doesn't win. So get this, his buddies on the Supreme Court have to squeeze him in. They push and push, and finally he's President. He doodles around for a few months and then boom! Some terrorists come in and flatten a couple skyscrapers in New York. Thousands of people die, jumping out of skyscrapers and getting flattened in plane crashes, and the Kid swings into action. He starts bombing where the terrorists are hiding, and looking for them. I mean, wouldn't you? But when he can't find them in a couple months he goes after a totally different country, attacking them 'cause they had oil and his Dad had trouble with them ten or twelve years ago. He says it's because this country was the real guys who flattened those skyscrapers, because they'll do it again with weapons of mass destruction if they get the chance. So the audience is right behind him. Now there's a big ass war right on stage and bombs are flying, people getting killed left and right. And the Kid, you'll love this, underequips the soldiers being sent in, not enough armor, and makes them do police functions in a hostile country for months and months and then years after he says we won the war. And we get to torturing the Iraqis, making them stand around with electrodes on their nutsacks, raping their wives and kids in front of them, attacking them with vicious dogs, pissing on their holy books, and the audience loves it, they clap and applaud. A real crowd pleaser, that sequence. But soon the kid has gotten 1800 American troops killed, wounded thousands more, and get this there were no weapons of mass destruction at all, the whole thing was for oil, and they keep lying about it, lying and lying and lying. And now there's tortured people all over the place. Meanwhile the economy's sputtering along, and another election comes up. The Kid wins this one, by a squeaker, 'cause the other guy wasn't likable enough. So people are starting to question the whole war thing, just a little, and the country we invaded is in the shitter two years later, and nobody wants to leave for fear it'll get even worse. And then.."

The agent leans forward in his chair. "NOW what?"

"Okay, big finish now. A category 4 hurricane comes in and wipes out half the Gulf Coast! Just flattens everything for hundreds of miles around. And the levees in New Orleans break, cause the kid cut the budget for them to finance the war, and the whole city is flooded! Now, the rich white folks got out for the most part, but the poor folks, mostly black, get stuck at the Superdome and the Convention Center by the thousands. And get this, the kid's on vacation so they wait for four days, sleeping in their own shit, starving to death, dying of thirst, we got dead grannies in their wheelchairs and dead bodies lying on the streets and floating in the water, godawful spread of disease and filth, looters running around shooting guns, we got no organization from the government, total chaos. And the Kid, the Kid's in charge and he blames the governor for not signing the proper forms, even though she did. And the Kid turns back offers of aid and says he'll handle it, and that's what he does, he handles it right into the ground. So we got 3,000 corpses in New York, 10 or 20,000 corpses in New Orleans, we got 1800 military corpses quietly shipped home in boxes, we got untold thousands of dead Iraqis, we got Iraq in chaos, we got guys with electrodes attached to their nutsacks and piss all over their Korans, we got New Orleans underwater, we got refugees packing domed stadiums and living in shit, we got five years of blood and carnage and the economy in the crapper, and we got $4/gallon gas. Everyone gets up and takes a bow, except of course the mounds of corpses littering the stage."

The agent is completely flummoxed. Just flabbergasted. "So what the hell do you call this act?"

The guy says, with a flourish, "The Aristocrats!"

Link posted by Krup @ 11:54 AM 12 comments

"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need, candidly, to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving."

"I understand there are 10,000 people dead. It's terrible. It's tragic. But in a democracy of 300 million people, over years and years and years, these things happen."

Link posted by Krup @ 11:00 AM 1 comments

The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists' requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims.

President Bush considers the release of photographs of flag-draped military coffins a reminder of the fallen troops’ sacrifice but believes family privacy should be respected, the White House said Friday...

But Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, said photos of caskets coming home from Vietnam had a tremendous impact on the way Americans came to view that war.

“As people began to see the reality of it and see the 55,000 people who were killed coming back in body bags, they became more and more upset by the war,” he said. “This is not about privacy. This is about trying to keep the country from facing the reality of war.”

Link posted by Krup @ 4:14 PM 0 comments

"In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats." The New York Times, September 5, 2005

"Our nation's leaders are responsible ... to confront problems, not pass them on to others. And to lead this nation to a responsibility era, a president himself must be responsible." George W. Bush's 2000 nomination acceptance speech

Link posted by Krup @ 1:32 PM 0 comments

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

Link posted by Krup @ 1:18 PM 4 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

"...formal accusation issued by a legislature against a public official charged with crime or other serious misconduct. In a looser sense the term is sometimes applied also to the trial by the legislature that may follow. Impeachment developed in England, beginning in the 14th cent., as a means of trying officials suspected of dereliction of duty.

Link posted by Krup @ 10:29 AM 1 comments

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overhwlemed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)--this is working very well for them.".

Link posted by Krup @ 10:09 AM 3 comments

"We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter.)

Link posted by Krup @ 4:04 PM 1 comments

"I don't want to see anybody do anymore goddamn press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don't do another press conference until the resources are in this city. And then come down to this city and stand with us when there are military trucks and troops that we can't even count."

Link posted by Krup @ 1:07 PM 0 comments

President Bush Diverts Critical Resources For Photo-Op

"Why are these helicopters being used as a backdrop for President Bush, instead of assisting the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

Why are members of the Coast Guard being used as a backdrop for Bush’s press conference? Don’t they have more important things to do?"

"First question: Why have aid and security taken so long to arrive?"...

"Second question: Why wasn't more preventive action taken?"...

"Third question: Did the Bush administration destroy FEMA's effectiveness?"

Link posted by Krup @ 12:24 PM 1 comments

- Getting nominated for a Koufax Award for this post.

- Helping John Kerry defeat George Bush in the 2004 election.

- And, of course, having Wonkette link to me, which, just like with Washingtonienne, led to my spread in Playboy:



(I'm still waiting to hear from HBO, however)

Link posted by Krup @ 10:29 AM 0 comments