The Common Good

An issue that has received a lot of attention lately is the fact that, although the public is sick and tired of the GOP, the Dems do not seem to offer much of an alternative simply because people have a hard time figuring out what exactly what they stand for. This is a shame, because it is due in large part to the Dems themselves. Not only does it prevent them from presenting a principled approach to a whole variety of issues (hence what you read in the press is about Dem strategy and tactics, not values and commitments) but it also allows the GOP an easier time in defining their opponents.

The historical roots of this problem stem in part from the Watergate upheaval, which introduced a renewed Democratic majority at a time when civil rights was tearing down the old New Deal coalition, but a majority based basically on not being the GOP in 1974 and then hanging on like grim death to the advantages of incumbency. The fecklessness of this approach has been exacerbated by the disfunctions of the Dem party where too many of the same failed tacticians have been calling the shots for campaigns for far too long.

Also, many of the Dems supporters have organized themselves into single interest advocacy groups that fail to take into account the larger picture. For example, feminists may oppose Casey (Dem pro-life for Senate in PA) despite the fact that, as a reliable Democratic vote in the Senate Casey will de facto be supporting a much more 'feminist' agenda regardless of his personal views, simply becuase he will vote for a Dem as a majority leader and will likely vote against regressive judicial appointments - as has Reid (Senate Minority Leader and also pro-life) - on the basis of an evaluation covering a whole host of progressive issues. The Dem interest groups are still acting as if the Dems had the majority, in which case lobbying for a narrow set of goals may make a limited amount of sense - but the Dems do not and the behavior of such groups will help perpetuate that situation by protraying the Dems as kowtowing to particular interests even if their pliciy stances are derived from attempting to uphold the common good for our entire society.

As a result of these factors, Dems appear to many less political people as always trying to play an angle, to play 'politics' with issues that for many people are more than just political footballs. The one consistent charge the GOP tries to make every election cycle (well, well apart innuendo about sexual shenanigans) is that Dems don't stand for anything, they lack 'backbone,' they blow with the preailing winds and 'flip-flop.'

The GOP has realized that people will respect you even if they don't agree with you if those disagreements are a matter of conscientious beliefs. The Dems need to rediscover their backbone and stand distinctly for a set of beliefs and only then address particular political issues. Issues are no substitute for core beliefs. It doesn't matter how many issues you agree with your constituents on if they cannot link those positions up to a much greater, overarching perspective that informs them and gives the voter confidence in the candidate's ability to prioritize and make judgments without bending to special interests.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the Dems do have overarching commitments, but they fail to discuss politics in these terms. The notion of the party of the 'common man' and the 'common good' has been discarded for a long time as old fashioned 'class warfare' and potentially offputting to donors, but it is in reality the Dems best argument for the stances they tend to take and the actions they favor.

Hurricane Katrina should be tattooed on every voters' conscience when it comes time to vote this November, because it encapsulates the differences between Dems and the GOP perfectly. When people are in trouble they do not look to abstractions like 'the market,' they look to government. The GOP loves to spout ideology about big versus small government, but in reality the public only cares if the government is efficient and is fair.

Obscure ideological debates over the size of government simply distract us from the more central question: is the government doing what it should be to aid the public good or not? It is not an ideological question, it is a simple pragmatic question of practicality. If my neighbors house is burning down, do I ask him if he invested wisely in the fire prevention devices? Do I turn my back and tell him to quit 'whining' for help? Or do I get together with him and other neighbors and put the fire out?

The same is true of the government: whether to use the resources of our government - the govenment that our tax dollars pay for - should not be subject to the GOP ideological mumbo-jumbo over the who the government can help (corporations) and who it can't (individuals). If we need it to serve the public interest, then it should do so. The alternative is Katrina - with the government standing by helplessly because of the ideological blinkers of our 'leaders' - the most power nation on earth unwilling to help its own people in distress. It is the equivalent of the fire department watching a house burn down simply because 'they did not have proper paperwork to fight the fire.'

Dems need to emphasize who what they advocate is in order to better serve the common good of a diverse and dynamic society. There are no answers in advance, as the GOP and its ideology would have you believe. The best answer is the answer that works to advance the common good. That is why the middle class and those who want to be middle class should embrace the Dems - not because of a laundry list of particular issues - but rather because the Dems work to ensure that everyone get a fair shake and that the government works for the people, not the people working for the government so that it can shower rewards on the few.

Katrina is the GOP vision, a country fettered by ideology. The country that won WWII and rebuilt Europe through pragmatic decisionmaking - that is the Dem vision.

WWIII?

The New Yorker: Fact: ...There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’”...

Liars who KNOWINGLY lied to us

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories....

The Democratic Party Plan - the US Constitution

It's an oldy but a goody. It is tried and tested. Its past success is beyond doubt. It is called the Constitution of the United States.

Yep, that is the plan the Democratic Party should suggest every time a talking head suggests that they have 'no plan' (and Bush does?).

What does this plan entail? For one thing it requires independent branches of government. And those independent branches act as checks and balances on each other. We haven't had that since Clinton was in office, and hence... well, you know the rest.

Why are independent branches of government important? Couldn't the Democratic party acted as a check on the GOP all this time? Well, I for one will agree that individual Democrats could have taken a more agressive stance, but institutionally speaking it makes all the difference in the world if you are in the majority as opposed to the minority. Majority status allows you to set the agenda, allows you to realistically bargain with other branches, and perhaps most important allows you to use subpoena's to conduct real hearings designed to air the truth.

Under the GOP rubberstamp Congress, we have all been treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed manure. The best aspect of the Constitutional plan is securing the ability to pierce the veil of lies and talkshow blathering and finally get some true idea of how bad our situation is. After all, the first rule in emergency management is to assess the situation in order to properly set priorities.

Pundits who ask the Democratic Party to come up with a comprehensive plan should be reminded that most of us - including the members of Congress - simply do not know what the true situation is. How does one plan in such an environment? First, by ferreting out the truth. A good start towards that goal would be by actually honoring the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Vaffanculo!

Photographer: Herald got it right

...Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”...

news from The Times

Times Online: DOZENS of the world’s cities, including London and New York, could be flooded by the end of the century, according to research which suggests that global warming will increase sea levels more rapidly than was previously thought.

The first study to combine computer models of rising temperatures with records of the ancient climate has indicated that sea levels could rise by up to 20ft (6m) by 2100, placing millions of people at risk.

Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk

File this under O for Obvious

Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive skills, researchers reported Monday.
That doesn't mean that daytime television is a brain drain, they say, since it's not clear that there's a direct relationship between the two.

But the findings do point to some association between TV choices and intellectual function, and that could prove useful in evaluating older people for cognitive decline...

TheStar.com

TheStar.com - How to spot a baby conservative: Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals....

>Cue whining about this study and egg-headed scientists from the Right.<

Independent Online Edition

Climate change 'irreversible' as Arctic sea ice fails to re-form

Nieman Watchdog

Iraq through the prism of Vietnam: The Vietnam War experience can’t tell us anything about the war in Iraq – or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind....

By Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Tom Engelhardt

Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?...Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country. Quite literally multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of several billion dollars being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing....

And replace 'war' with 'security,' 'privacy' with 'loyalty' and 'borrow and spend' with 'fiscal conservative.' 

And the apology was forthcoming on February 17th. 

Update: Dick Cheney - anatomy of moral cowardice

The Poor Man Institute

Keyboard Kommando Komix

Gitmo tactics coming home

Jail Inmates Were Stripped to Deter Riots - Los Angeles Times

More than 100 inmates at a Los Angeles County jail were ordered to strip naked, had their mattresses taken away and were left with only blankets to cover themselves for a day as Los Angeles Sheriff's Department officials tried to quell racially charged violence that has plagued the jail system for nearly two weeks.

The tactics — defended Friday by jail officials as necessary to stop the fighting — were immediately criticized as dehumanizing and highly inappropriate by civil rights activists and the Sheriff's Department's independent overseer.

"I have no problem taking privileges away…. It comes to a different level of basic human rights if you take away clothing and dignity," said Michael Gennaco, chief of Sheriff Lee Baca's office of independent review. "I don't know if it is consistent with the sheriff's core values."

Swing State Project

Here is a link to a good synopsis of why the Dems need to contest every congressional seat.

Swing State Project: CO-05: Hefley (R) Retiring - Band of Brothers' Fawcett Ready to Go: "Hefley's retirement is the perfect illustration of why you run candidates in every district, no matter how hopeless the territory might seem at first blush."

Two degree rise Fahrenheit

Independent Online Edition > Environment:
A crucial global warming "tipping point" for the Earth, highlighted only last week by the British Government, has already been passed, with devastating consequences.

Research commissioned by The Independent reveals that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has now crossed a threshold, set down by scientists from around the world at a conference in Britain last year, beyond which really dangerous climate change is likely to be unstoppable.

The implication is that some of global warming's worst predicted effects, from destruction of ecosystems to increased hunger and water shortages for billions of people, cannot now be avoided, whatever we do. It gives considerable force to the contention by the green guru Professor James Lovelock, put forward last month in The Independent, that climate change is now past the point of no return.

The danger point we are now firmly on course for is a rise in global mean temperatures to 2 degrees above the level before the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.

At the moment, global mean temperatures have risen to about 0.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era - and worrying signs of climate change, such as the rapid melting of the Arctic ice in summer, are already increasingly evident. But a rise to 2 degrees would be far more serious....

Professor Burke added: "We have very little time to act now. Governments must stop talking and start spending. We already have the technology to allow us to meet our growing need for energy while keeping a stable climate. We must deploy it now. Doing so will cost less than the Iraq war so we know we can afford it."

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him: The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has tried to stop him from speaking out since he gave a lecture last month calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Post-Katrina Promises Unfulfilled

Post-Katrina Promises Unfulfilled: Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, President Bush's lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review of events since the hurricane shows.

While the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush's ringing call from New Orleans's Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to "do what it takes" to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action, critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that is largely incomplete as Bush heads into next week's State of the Union address.

mail fraud

No that is not a reference to Karl Malone, but to the recent increase in postage rates. Did you know that the rates were not increased in order to cover the costs of delivering the mail?

The USPS has publicly stated that no increase was necessary.

Instead, postal rates were raised on the political orders of the ruling Rethuglican party in legislation passed two years ago demanding an 'escrow fund.'

The increase follows legislation requiring the Postal Service to put $3 billion in an escrow account this year.

Why the hell does the USPS need a $3,000,000,000.00 escrow fund you ask? Well... it doesn't. But the Rethugs have had such an easy time of raiding other lock boxes and monies set aside that they thought they'd help themselves to more via the postal service.

In short, the postal increase is a Rethuglican regressive tax designed to help fund BushCos gutting of the income tax on the super-rich. This from the party that supposedly frowns upon government 'picking winners and losers.'

SSA told to stop stealing from retirees

An issue revisited

Press Release: December 8, 2005 For Immediate Release
Federal Court Strikes Down Social Security Administration Policy Suspending Benefits for Elderly and Disabled
Contact: Gerald A. McIntyre, National Senior Citizens Law Center 3435 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 2860, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Office: (213) 639-0930, ext. 300 Email: gmcintyre@nsclc.org
Jennifer J. Parish, Director of Criminal Justice Advocacy, Urban Justice Center
666 Broadway, 10th floor, New York, NY 10012 Office: (646) 602-5644 Cell: (646) 872-1686 Email: jparish@urbanjustice.org
Bill Lienhard, Project Director, Mental Health Project, Urban Justice Center
Office: (646) 602-5667 Cell: (917) 685-8181 Email: blienhard@urbanjustice.org
Los Angeles Times Article Attached

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ruled this week that it is illegal for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to suspend the benefits of elderly and disabled Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security beneficiaries whenever there is an outstanding felony warrant. The ruling, if it is not appealed, will affect thousands in New York, Connecticut and Vermont, most of them people with serious mental impairments who have no other source of income, who are often at risk of homelessness and whom law enforcement authorities have no interest in pursuing. “It leaves SSA with the dilemma of having one policy for the states of the Second Circuit and another for the rest of the country,” said Gerald McIntyre of the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

The decision came in the case of Felipe Oteze Fowlkes, at the time a Schenectady, NY resident, whose benefits were suspended in 2000 under a law that allows benefits to be suspended when a person is “fleeing to avoid prosecution” for a felony. SSA applies this provision with a broad brush and suspends benefits whenever there is an outstanding felony warrant regardless of whether or not the individual is aware of the charges. In Mr. Fowlkes’ case, it was two Virginia warrants, one for petty larceny and another for a 1995 voter registration offense, that were the basis for suspending his benefits. He had never been informed of either charge. The Court ruled in Mr. Fowlkes’ case that the plain meaning of the word “fleeing” requires intent and that, therefore, there must be a finding of intent before benefits can be suspended under this provision.

In each case where this suspension provision is applied, law enforcement authorities have already been notified where to find the individual but have decided not to seek the person’s arrest or extradition. Thus, in most cases, the underlying offenses are minor and often quite old.

The court ruling comes one day after SSA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which would enshrine in a formal regulation its policy of suspending benefits whenever there is an outstanding felony warrant. With the Second Circuit decision, it is now clear that this proposed regulation cannot be put into effect in New York, Connecticut and Vermont. It leaves SSA with the dilemma of having to decide whether to revisit its irrational and inhumane policy or to instead try to proceed with one policy for the states of the Second Circuit and another for the rest of the country.

Here is the December LA Times update on the issue

The Raw Story

Time: FBI email says Abramoff case 'far from over'

Abramoff Viewed as ‘The Middle Guy,’ Official Involved in Probe Tells TIME, Suggesting There Are Bigger Targets in Their Sights

CNN.com

Drunken Santas run riot in Auckland - Dec 17, 2005 A group of 40 people dressed in Santa Claus outfits, many of them drunk, went on a rampage through Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, robbing stores, assaulting security guards and urinating from highway overpasses, police said Sunday.

The rampage, dubbed "Santarchy," began early Saturday afternoon when the men, wearing ill-fitting Santa costumes, threw beer bottles and urinated on cars from an overpass...

Independent Online Edition > Environment

Last June, September and October were all logged as the warmest ever, world-wide. The past 10 years are all in the warmest 10 ever recorded, apart from 1996 whose place is taken by 1990.

This year Arctic sea ice dropped to its smallest ever extent, the Atlantic suffered a record hurricane season and an unprecedented drought reduced the flow of the Amazon to its lowest ever level. Canada and Australia had their hottest ever weather this year, while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria suffered heatwaves touching 50C.

Importing Bushocracy to Iraq

Planting stories and bribing reporters in Iraq - why not it's what the Busheviks do here as well: U.S. plants propaganda to tout democracy in Iraq - Americas - International Herald Tribune

Science News Article | Reuters.co.uk

LONDON (Reuters) - The Atlantic Conveyor, a life-giving ocean current that keeps northern Europe warm, is slowing down, scientists said on Wednesday.

If the 30 percent slowdown seen over the past 12 years is not just a blip, temperatures in northern Europe could drop significantly, despite global warming, they added.

Scientists have long forecast that the Atlantic Conveyor that carries warm surface water north and cold deep water back to the equator could break down because of global warming.

According to the theory, rising air temperatures cause ice caps to melt, making the water less salty and therefore less dense so it can't sink and flow back south.

The scientists on Wednesday said this was the first time that observations had put flesh on the bones of the theory.

"This is the first time we have observed a change in the current on a human timescale," oceanographer Harry Bryden said, noting that it had completely shut down during the ice ages.

This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else - New York Times

Christmas's self-proclaimed defenders are rewriting the holiday's history. They claim that the "traditional" American Christmas is under attack by what John Gibson, another Fox anchor, calls "professional atheists" and "Christian haters." But America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states.

Christmas gained popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's Harper's Weekly drawings, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. By the 1920's, the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the "Christmas shopping season."

Religious leaders objected strongly. The Christmas that emerged had an inherent tension: merchants tried to make it about buying, while clergymen tried to keep commerce out. A 1931 Times roundup of Christmas sermons reported a common theme: "the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism." A 1953 Methodist sermon broadcast on NBC - typical of countless such sermons - lamented that Christmas had become a "profit-seeking period." This ethic found popular expression in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." In the 1965 TV special, Charlie Brown ignores Lucy's advice to "get the biggest aluminum tree you can find" and her assertion that Christmas is "a big commercial racket," and finds a more spiritual way to observe the day.

This year's Christmas "defenders" are not just tolerating commercialization - they're insisting on it. They are also rewriting Christmas history on another key point: non-Christians' objection to having the holiday forced on them.

An Open Letter To Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald From Former White House Counsel John W. Dean

...Even more troubling, from an historical point of view, is the fact that the narrowness of your investigation, which apparently is focusing on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (making it a crime to uncover the covert status of a CIA agent), plays right into the hands of perpetrators in the Administration.

Indeed, this is exactly the plan that was employed during Watergate by those who sought to conceal the Nixon Administration's crimes, and keep criminals in office.

The plan was to keep the investigation focused on the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters -- and away from the atmosphere in which such an action was undertaken. Toward this end, I was directed by superiors to get the Department of Justice to keep its focus on the break-in, and nothing else.

That was done. And had Congress not undertaken its own investigation (since it was a Democratically-controlled Congress with a Republican President) it is very likely that Watergate would have ended with the conviction of those caught in the bungled burglary and wiretapping attempt at the Democratic headquarters.

Now, with a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican President, you (a Republican appointee) are the last bulwark of protection for the American people. We must hope you will keep faith with them....

RollingStone.com: The Man Who Sold the War

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand. On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to the ring and index fingers of a man sitting pensively in a padded chair. The officer then stretched a black rubber tube, pleated like an accordion, around the man's chest and another across his abdomen. Finally, he slipped a thick cuff over the man's brachial artery, on the inside of his upper arm.

Strapped to the polygraph machine was Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a forty-three-year-old Iraqi who had fled his homeland in Kurdistan and was now determined to bring down Saddam Hussein. For hours, as thin mechanical styluses traced black lines on rolling graph paper, al-Haideri laid out an explosive tale. Answering yes and no to a series of questions, he insisted repeatedly that he was a civil engineer who had helped Saddam's men to secretly bury tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. The illegal arms, according to al-Haideri, were buried in subterranean wells, hidden in private villas, even stashed beneath the Saddam Hussein Hospital, the largest medical facility in Baghdad.

It was damning stuff -- just the kind of evidence the Bush administration was looking for. If the charges were true, they would offer the White House a compelling reason to invade Iraq and depose Saddam. That's why the Pentagon had flown a CIA polygraph expert to Pattaya: to question al-Haideri and confirm, once and for all, that Saddam was secretly stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.

There was only one problem: It was all a lie. After a review of the sharp peaks and deep valleys on the polygraph chart, the intelligence officer concluded that al-Haideri had made up the entire story, apparently in the hopes of securing a visa.

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon....

You know the drill... read the whole thing.

Woodward joins a decadent dance - Los Angeles Times

There is something singularly appropriate about the fact that the Plame affair should involve Woodward, whose skillful and courageous use of the ur-voice among confidential sources virtually created a whole genre of Washington reporting. It's a journalistic strategy style dependent on the cultivation of access to well-placed officials greased by promises of "confidentiality." It's a way of doing journalism that still serves its practitioners' career interests, but less and less often their readers or viewers because it's a game the powerful and well-connected have learned to play to their own advantage.

Whatever its self-righteous pretensions, it's a style of journalism whose signature sound is less the blowing of whistles than it is the spinning of tops.

That's why the Washington press corps, whose ranks include so many alleged commentators that you can't spit without hitting one, steadfastly refuses to put the Plame affair and its participants in the context that explains the event. That context is the Bush administration's unprecedented — and largely successful — effort to bend Washington-based news coverage to its ends. The Washington press corps doesn't want to talk about this because it basically puts some of its most admired members in a line of venal patsies.

Read the whole thing...

'Woodward Could Be a Boon to Libby'

'Could'?

I believe it was INTENDED as a boon to Libby and the White House writ large. In fact, it seems to me that Woodward's 'revelation' is merely the latest dirty trick to come down the pike.

Would Woodward burn his reputation as a journalist (which, we must admit, was already heavily tarnished among those who actually pay attention to such matters) on defending this White House? We already know the answer in Judy Miller's case... and I suspect the answer is the same for both: YES!

Consider:

1) Ideologically Woodward had already cast his lot with the Bushites, just like Judy Miller. If you have doubts read his book "Bush at War."

2) Woodward cannot document any of the 'revelations' for which he is now apologizing, no contemporaneous notes, no contemporaneous mentions to anyone -- not even his editor. (Woodward did let his editor in on 'the secret' just one month ago... but for no apparent reason, other than setting up an alibi perhaps?!?) The one journalist he cites as having spoken to about this, Walter Pincus, dismissed it out of hand.

Pincus said he does not recall Woodward telling him that. In an interview, Pincus said he cannot imagine he would have forgotten such a conversation around the same time he was writing about Wilson.

"Are you kidding?" Pincus said. "I certainly would have remembered that."

3) His revelations are easily construed as an attempt to buttress the fairy tales peddled by the White House regarding the leak: the status of Wilson's wife was merely innocent gossip within DC circles, reporters knew early on, and there was no intense focus on Wilson and Plame or concerted attempt to intimidate the CIA via her exposure. (see the Washington Post story drawing these conclusions right here).

"I think it's a considerable boost to the defendant's case," said John Moustakas, a former federal prosecutor who has no role in the case. "It casts doubt about whether Fitzgerald knew everything as he charged someone with very serious offenses." Other legal experts agreed.

Moustakas said Woodward also has considerable credibility because he has been granted "unprecedented access" to the inner workings of the Bush White House. "When Woodward says this information was disclosed to me in a nonchalant and casual way -- not as if it was classified -- it helps corroborate Libby's account about himself and about the administration," Moustakas said.

Woodward's 'revelation' also casts doubt on prosecutor Fitgerald's grasp of the case, implying that key facts in the chronology of the leak are still unknown.

4) Did we mention that Woodward's 'cover' was blown by a 'Senior Administration Official"? Since when did a SAO do anything out of fairness or the public interest? This is coming out now because they believe Woodward's fabrications will help beat back Fitzgerald's investigation.

But why would a Woodward or Miller court public disgrace on behalf of the Bushites? Because both of them are 'true believers': they truly believe in the fundamentals of the Bushite governing philosophy. That philosophy holds that people are ignorant cattle who need to be manipulated by their betters for their own sake, that the world is a nasty place and nasty deeds must be done to make one's way through it successfully, and that the end justifies the means. Mayberry Machiavellis, meet your city cousins, the self-annointed DC elite! As their work and lack of basic journalistic ethics suggests, both Woodward and Miller consider themselves as a breed apart from their journalist 'peers': they consider themselves players, not mere reporters.

Sure, there will be a brief period of disgrace among the SoCalledLibrulMedia to endure, but from their perspective it is a small sacrifice to advance their 'ideals.' And in the end, they will be lionized by the Bushite faithful. Speaking of merely materialist payoffs, imagine some potential rewards that Woodward will extract in consequence of falling on his 'journalistic sword': the sole authorized biography of Bush perhaps...?

Bonus point: We only have Woodward's word (which, however you read the recent 'apology,' is now utterly worthless) that CIA director George Tenet ever said finding WMDs in Iraq would be a 'slam dunk.' What is the probative value of this statement today?

7 deadly sins

And those that commit them...

Indictment

Here it is, an indictment that is so thorough as to serve as an indictment of an entire administration. As others have noted, either this was a conspiracy involving the entire top level of the Bushite regime or classified information was routinely and incompentently splashed about like so many soap suds in a bubble bath. Scooter's deliberate and repeated obstruction and perjury has sufficed to cloud the issue, but in and of itself it indicates that the former option is the prohibitive favorite. Of course, the Bushites are hoping instead that the dust Libby's criminal behavior has kicked up will allow them to portray themselves as 'merely' criminally incompetent rather than intent on treasonous criminality. Quite a situation, when those are your two options for explaining your own government's behavior, eh?

Schwarzenegger Street

This is one of the funniest parodies I've seen in a long, long time!

Informed Comment on Syria

Juan Cole is of the opinion that Syria may well have been fairly implicated in the UN report delivered by Detlev Mehlis. However, that does not mean that the Bushite drive to topple the Syrian regime is not being driven by NeoCon ambitions and Bush's own blasphemous beliefs regarding his role as Middle East Messiah. So we may be witnessing one incompentent, bloodyhanded regime tossing another incompetent, bloodyhanded regime a 'gift' in the form of a marketable rationale for another 'wag the dog' and 'rally round the flag' war.

Informed Comment: Some kind readers have requested that I say something about the report of UN-appointed German diplomat Detlev Mehlis concerning the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. Mehlis is a careful and determined investigator and his findings, which fingered persons in the direct circle of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad, are explosive for the area....

Personally, I have been convinced by the series of bombings in Lebanon against anti-Syrian personalities (most recently May Shidyaq, the LBC journalist and interviewer), that high-level Syrian secret police officials are on a rampage. Whereas when Hariri was killed, his was only the second high-profile such assassination, and I found an al-Qaeda hit on him plausible (given his long association with the Saudi royal family), the subsequent string of such killings made that theory less and less likely. Mehlis's report seems to me highly credible. The only question left is whether al-Asad himself is implicated, or whether the Baathist Old Guard (which checked his reformist tendencies) has been operating behind his back. That his brother is implicated, as Mark LeVine says, is pretty damning, though.

The Bush administration wishes to take advantage of the scandal to push the Baath Party out of power. The likely successor in Syria, however, is the Muslim Brotherhood. If you had an MB state in Syria, it would certainly menace the stability of Jordan and very possibly of Saudi Arabia. You'd have a possible Fundamentalist Muslim Axis, stretching from Tehran to Basra to Damascus, then down to Amman and Maan, and over to Gaza. It would have problems of cohesion because of the Sunni-Shiite divide, but on issues like Israel the two can generally agree. Al-Sharaq al-Awsat had a piece not so long ago about how the Israelis had decided that having a weak Bashar al-Asad in power in Syria might be preferable to most likely alternatives. But Bush doesn't have the common sense of the Israeli officer corps, and is better at breaking things than gluing them together.

Who was the real target?

Here is some interesting speculation on the possible motives of the treasonous outing of Valerie Plame. Was it simply a case of Corleone Bush attempting to deliver a horse head to Wilson, thereby sending a more general message of intimidation to the CIA? Or was the CIA operation headed by Valerie Plame -- Brewster Jennings & Associates -- the real target? Their beat was investigating and countering the spread of WMDs and as such this operation would be in perfect position to debunk any false claims intended to mislead the country into war....

I will have to take a closer look at the allegations being pursued against Syria in the Hariri assassination in order to better gauge the validity of the changes and the potential veracity of the scenario discussed below:

Let Justice Be Done- by Justin Raimondo: Everyone assumes Libby and his co-conspirators were really after Wilson, but this now seems unwarranted, especially in light of Fitzgerald's reported focus on the Niger uranium forgeries. If this question of the forgeries is now within Fitzgerald's purview, it opens up the possibility that the conspirators really were after Plame on her own account. If Plame and her associates were hot on the trail of whoever forged the Niger uranium documents, by neutralizing Brewster Jennings & Associates the Libby cabal closed one possible route to uncovering their schemes – and opened up another one.

This drama is playing out in two theaters, one domestic and the other overseas. In Washington, the heavens are falling even before Fitzgerald issues so much as a single indictment, but they're also threatening to take a tumble in the Middle East. The U.S. is ratcheting up its campaign against Syria, even as the principal proponents of confronting Damascus – Libby, Hadley, Hannah, Wurmser, et al. – find themselves in Fitzgerald's sights. In effect, the prosecutor is running a race with the War Party: can they provoke a war with Syria before he brings charges?

OK, so I'm a little late to the party... Others have already identified long before now that there must be something other than mere revenge motivating the Bushites in this matter, something so toxic that they would rather issue mea culpas for insertng the fale uranium claim into Bush's 2003 state of the nation address rather than have things be investigated more thoroughly. And, as Swopa notes below, that is about the only time the Bushites have ever expressed any contrition (unless you count the grudging statements about Katrina, which were still hedged by grumbles about how 'unprecedented' a hurricane in the Gulf was). What could have been so toxic as to have led the Bushites to scream 'Uncle' just in order to change the topic? Perhaps deliberately forging 'evidence' (later referred to as being in the 'British report') intended to mislead the nation into war, a crime that is not only punishable but also treasonous?

As other observers have long since noted, what turned the Niger uranium story into a feeding frenzy in July 2003 wasn't that Joseph Wilson accused Dubya of saying something that wasn't true in his State of the Union speech -- it was that the Orwell Bush administration admitted it, something they had never done before and promptly decided never to do again.

So what prompted that isolated (and promptly orphaned) lapse of apparent honesty?...

Giving in to Wilson's criticism started a media firestorm about how the sentence got into the speech in the first place -- but apparently the Bushites preferred that to having people take a closer look at the "British report."

We've Been Here Before

Anna Quindlen gets it... this is not about just one leak, it is about a perversion of our form of governance by using character assassination, cultivation of fear and deliberate intimidation to make a mockery of constitutional guarantees of democratic governance. What good is a a right to free speech if everyone is afraid to exercise if for fear of being labeled unpatriotic. It should be treason to lie a country into war, and if Prosecuter Fitzpatrick is as able as he is reputed, those guilty will soon be sweating it out under indictment.

During each election cycle, we ponder the question of whether character matters. Of course it does. Does anyone doubt that the continued prosecution of this war has to do with the personality of the commander in chief, a man who is stubborn and calls it strength, who wears blinders and calls it vision? When he vowed to invade Iraq, the advisers he heeded were those who, like him, had never seen combat. The one who had was marginalized and is now gone. The investigation of who leaked what to whom, of what the reporter knew and how she knew it, may be about national security and journalistic ethics, but at its base it is about something more important: the Nixonian lengths to which these people will go to shore up a bankrupt policy and destroy those who cross them on it.

The most unattractive trait of the American empire is American arrogance, which the president embodies and which this war elevated.

t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: Karl and Scooter's Excellent Adventure

AS I mentioned at the time, a neglected but major impetus behind the Iraq War was the desire for a 'splendid' little war with which to cement the GOP's political hegemony. Frank Rich has kept his eye on this aspect of the emerging scandals. Iraq is about more than just oil or geopolitics or 'starving the beast' -- it is a GOP attempt to transform American politics for decades to come. American democracy as defined by the FDR's New Deal is the ultimate target of Bushite shock and awe.

For Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush to get what they wanted most, slam-dunk midterm election victories, and for Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney to get what they wanted most, a war in Iraq for reasons predating 9/11, their real whys for going to war had to be replaced by fictional, more salable ones. We wouldn't be invading Iraq to further Rovian domestic politics or neocon ideology; we'd be doing so instead because there was a direct connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda and because Saddam was on the verge of attacking America with nuclear weapons. The facts and intelligence had to be fixed to create these whys; any contradictory evidence had to be dismissed or suppressed.

Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney were in the boiler room of the disinformation factory. The vice president's repetitive hyping of Saddam's nuclear ambitions in the summer and fall of 2002 as well as his persistence in advertising bogus Saddam-Qaeda ties were fed by the rogue intelligence operation set up in his own office. As we know from many journalistic accounts, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby built their "case" by often making an end run around the C.I.A., State Department intelligence and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Their ally in cherry-picking intelligence was a similar cadre of neocon zealots led by Douglas Feith at the Pentagon.

This is what Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's wartime chief of staff, was talking about last week when he publicly chastised the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" for sowing potential disaster in Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

BBC - Press Office - George Bush on Elusive Peace

President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Suck on this, Schwarzeneggar

Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Judge Orders Release of Abu Ghraib Photos

A federal judge ruled today that graphic pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image. Last year a Republican senator conceded that they contained scenes of "rape and murder" and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said they included acts that were "blatantly sadistic."

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."

Daily Kos: Building the broader movement

Amy Sullivan has an interesting take on the role Choice groups have had in damaging their own cause....

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday"Bush is keeping track of Hurricane Rita as it hits his home state of Texas. That's Bush's worst nightmare: an electric chair with no power."
--Jay Leno

"Hurricane Rita is supposed to make landfall in Texas, which is good for Barbara Bush because she can insult survivors closer to home."
--Bill Maher

"Yesterday President Bush made his fifth visit to the area that received the most damage from Hurricane Katrina. In other words, the White House."
--Conan O'Brien

"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry

"Now here's some sad information coming out of Washington. According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again. And I thought, `Well, why not? He's got everybody else drinking.'"
--David Letterman

Gas Profit Guzzlers

When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were getting an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

The companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period....

Feds are fools

Hundreds of truck drivers from Minnesota, Alabama, Georgia and even Massachusetts have been crisscrossing the country since the beginning of September, moving loads of ice from storage facility to storage facility and earning big bucks from the federal government to do little more than sit in their cabs and not unload their precious cargo.

why distribute donated food when a lucrative contract could be had?

EXCLUSIVE: UP IN FLAMES Tons of British aid donated to help Hurricane Katrina victims to be BURNED by Americans

Another no-bid contract

Halliburton Gets Contract To Pry Gold Fillings From New Orleans Corpses' Teeth

Message: I Care About the Black Folks

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.

Jailed Reporter Is Distanced From News, Not Elite Visitors

Locked in the Alexandria Detention Center for the past 11 weeks, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access and precious little opportunity to view CNN. Her phone calls are limited, friends say. Her daily newspaper arrives a day late.

But for 30 minutes nearly every day, the world comes to her: A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, visited Miller between early July, when she was jailed for refusing to be questioned by a federal prosecutor, and Labor Day, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

The future of liberalism in the US

The Death of Environmentalism: Global warming politics in a post-environmental world

Stupid Quotes

25 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes About Hurricane Katrina And Its Aftermath

White House Briefing

"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."

Noblesse oblige? Not our president

...To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have — replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf....

Simon Schama: Sorry Mr President, Katrina is not 9/11

Slipstreaming behind the annual rituals of sorrow and reverence for 9/11, George W Bush has decreed that, five days later, on the 16th, there is to be a further day of solemnities on which the nation will pray for the unnumbered victims of Hurricane Katrina. Prayers (like vacations) are the default mode for this president who knows how to chuckle and bow the head in the midst of disaster but not, when it counts, how to govern or to command. If you feel the prickly heat of politics, summon a hymn to make it go away; make accountability seem a blasphemy....

Feds Won't Ban Katrina Recovery Photos, Won't Help Either

Challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed on Saturday not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

The government won't, however, permit photographers to join them in boats or helicopters during the mission to recover bodies from flooded homes....

UnFreakingBelievable

[Republican House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Different rules for the rich and powerful

Chief Justice Rehnquist's Drug Habit - The man in full. By Jack Shafer

Senator Bears Witness And Bares Emotions

Landrieu was at once gracious and defiant, thanking the president and then -- in her floor speech -- ridiculing his statement last week that no one "anticipated the breach of the levees."

"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President," Landrieu said. This included the clay figurine, Mr. Bill, from "Saturday Night Live." Landrieu is a friend of Walter Williams, a native of New Orleans and Mr. Bill's creator, and he had deployed the high-voiced and squishable icon in public service announcements about Louisiana's coastal erosion problems before the storm. "How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?" Landrieu asked in her one hint of a laugh line all day.

No one laughed.

White House Briefing

Late Night Humor: From the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno": "Actually, today, President Bush sent Vice President Dick Cheney to New Orleans. Is that what we need down there? Another person requiring emergency medical help?"

From Jon Stewart on the "Daily Show": "Little observation: When people don't want to play the blame game? They're to blame."

Newsflash: Katrina Wasn't a Hurricane

Leave it to insurance companies to waste no time finding a way to let themselves off the hook. At ConsumerWatchdog.org we are already hearing from Katrina survivors who are being told that their insurance won't cover them because "it was a flood not a hurricane" that caused the damage and they (along with about 60% of folks in New Orleans and the Gulf region) don't have flood insurance.

Nightly News with Brian Williams

While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard. The short version is: there won't be any pictures of this particular group of Guard soldiers on our newscast tonight. Rules (or I suspect in this case an order on a whim) like those do not HELP the palpable feeling that this area is somehow separate from the United States.

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.

W's mom touts Astrodome

Former First Lady Barbara Bush was about the most chipper visitor yesterday to the Houston Astrodome, where thousands who fled the Hurricane Katrina disaster are sheltered.

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them," the Bush family's matriarch chuckled as she spoke on National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.

'Wash Post' Runs A Key Katrina Correction

The BushCo personal destruction machine swings into action:

In its Sunday edition, the Washington Post quoted a "senior Bush official" [Karl Rove, hard at work] who said that "as of Saturday [September 3rd, Louisiana Governor] Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency." This, of course, was meant to make the governor look foolish and spread the blame around for the disastrous response to the disaster, though it was hard to imagine on what grounds the newspaper would quote an unnamed source in this case. [...Given that a matter of the public record can be easily verified through a little simple research.]

Several hours of blogosphere howling ensued. Later in the day, the Post ran this correction, or rather, 180-degree turn:

"A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26. [Katrina made landfall on August 29.]

Oh, and that other fiasco?

Insurgents Seize Key Town in Iraq: Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led Al Qaeda in Iraq took open control of a key western town at the Syrian border, deploying its guerrilla fighters in the streets and flying Zarqawi's black banner from rooftops, witnesses, residents and others in the city and surrounding villages said.

A sign newly posted at the entrance of Qaim declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Kingdom of Qaim." A statement posted in mosques described Qaim as an "Islamic kingdom liberated from the occupation."...

Viewpoint: Has Katrina saved US media?

...[In the U.S.] National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

'Lies or ignorance'

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington....

Falluja Floods the Superdome

...As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2....

United States of Shame

...It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?

'My Pet Goat' -- The Sequel

This time, during a catastrophe, the president did not merely dither for seven minutes, but for three days, and his top advisors followed suit. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall failure of leadership in this weeks hurricane's disaster, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.

While a rising chorus in the press has taken the White House, FEMA and the Pentagon to task for performing miserably in their response to the human disaster on the Gulf Coast, few have focused on the most telling aspect of the entire failure. It’s not just incompetence. It’s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 “My Pet Goat” dithering on an administration-wide scale.

Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action.

While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty....

This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name.

Click on the link and read the whole article, this is a must read!

Bush's New Orleans tour a 'photo-op'

Bush's New Orleans tour a 'photo-op'A Senator from the southern US state of Louisiana has branded President George W Bush's visit to a busted levee in New Orleans a mere photo-op, and slammed his government's response to the Hurricane Katrina tragedy.

Mary Landrieu rebuked Mr Bush for failing to heed her call to name a cabinet-level official to lead the federal response to the hurricane, the one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

"Perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street Levee," said Senator Landrieu, a Democrat.

"Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.

"Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity.

"The desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

"The good and decent people of south-east Louisiana and the Gulf Coast - black and white, rich and poor, young and old - deserve far better from their national government."

Compassionate Conservative

Hastert: New Orleans "could be bulldozed": It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's 7 feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill....

Hastert, in a transcript supplied by the suburban Chicago newspaper, said there was no question that New Orleans residents would rebuild their city, but noted that federal insurance and other federal aid were involved. "We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness."

Asked whether it made sense to spend billions rebuilding a city that lies below sea level, he replied, "I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me."...

blah, blah, black sheep

The ten most frightening words in the English language?

Wonkette

Rehnquist text message from New Orleans

Black fury at Bush over rescue delay

In an extraordinary outburst during a live television fundraising concert broadcast on America's NBC network, the rapper Kanye West said: 'Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days [waiting for help] because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. We already realised a lot of the people that could help are at war right now.'

Naturally, his statements critical of Bush was censored by the network.

The Show Didn't Benefit by Censors - Los Angeles Times: AS we enter the celebrity telethon phase of the Katrina tragedy, NBC's "A Concert for Hurricane Relief" stands as a blueprint for its own kind of institutional failure.

By censoring Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West's remarks critical of President Bush during its West Coast feed of the program Friday night, the network violated the most moving and essential moment in an otherwise sterile, self-serving corporate broadcast.

"It would be most unfortunate," the network said in a statement defending its action, "if the efforts of the artists who participated tonight and the generosity of millions of Americans who are helping those in need are overshadowed by one person's opinion."

Excuse me, but whose tragedy is this: NBC's or America's?

NBC may have been nervous about West's comments, including the notion that America and its president are unresponsive to the needs of the poor. But you can be sure those remarks would have been cheered more than anything else in the program by the black parents and children still trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome if they had been able to hear them.

The line NBC stopped us from hearing on the West Coast: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

The puzzling thing is why NBC axed that, but allowed another provocation, potentially more disturbing, to stay in: "We already realized a lot of the people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way, and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us."

West was apparently referring to the National Guard troops who were sent to New Orleans to help the flood victims and stop the looting.

The show was aired live on the East Coast, where West's full comments were heard.

There was a several-second tape delay, but the person in charge "was instructed to listen for a curse word and didn't realize [West] had gone off script," NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks told Associated Press.

Whether we agree or disagree with West's impassioned riff on media and government racism, the network's relentless self-promotion was by far the more offensive part of the broadcast.

Bush sends marines as flood fury grows

Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, also appealed to Bush to bring home a Louisiana National Guard unit, the 256th Brigade Combat Team, which is serving in Iraq. 'They are urgently needed back home. We have never needed them so much,' she said.

Bush also signed a $10.5 billion emergency aid package for the stricken area. But he is struggling to restore his personal credibility after liberals and conservatives joined forces to criticise the federal relief effort.

Louisiana Senator David Vitter, a Republican, said the federal response had been 'an abject failure'. Attacks on the Bush administration's tardy reaction to the disaster also came from unexpected quarters in the media; even conservative commentators on the usually loyal Fox News channel lambasted the President's performance.

You're on your own, Britain's victims told

British families trapped in New Orleans last night claimed that US authorities had refused to evacuate them as Hurricane Katrina approached the city.

Although assistance was offered to US residents, British nationals were told they would have to fend for themselves. According to those who remain stranded in the stricken city, police had visited hotels and guest houses on the eve of the hurricane offering to evacuate Americans, but not Britons.

The order meant UK holidaymakers without cars were left helpless in the face of the hurricane. Some have been trapped in hotels and guest houses since the hurricane struck at 7am local time last Monday.

One family from Liverpool, trapped in a flooded section of the city, told relatives yesterday of their bewilderment when they realised US citizens would be offered preferential treatment.

Gerrard Scott, 35, spoke to his brother Peter from the Ramada Hotel in New Orleans where he has been stranded without assistance with wife, Sandra, 38, and seven-year-old son Ronan for the past six days. 'Those that didn't fit their criteria were told to help themselves. The police said they were evacuating Americans, and took away the majority.

'The British who were left all thought the police would come back, but nobody has. They have just been left,' said Peter Scott last night. Among the 30 or so people still inside the Ramada Hotel is a woman recovering from breast cancer who had been confined to a hotel room by herself because of fears over her immune system....

Chertoff: 'Katrina scenario did not exist'

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years....

Last week, Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told CNN his agency had recently planned for a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Speaking to "Larry King Live" on August 31, in the wake of Katrina, Brown said, "That Category 4 hurricane caused the same kind of damage that we anticipated. So we planned for it two years ago. Last year, we exercised it. And unfortunately this year, we're implementing it."

Brown suggested FEMA -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- was carrying out a prepared plan, rather than having to suddenly create a new one....

Chertoff argued that authorities actually had assumed that "there would be overflow from the levee, maybe a small break in the levee. The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."

He added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."

But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.

"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.

Reuters reported that in 2004, more than 40 state, local and volunteer organizations practiced a scenario in which a massive hurricane struck and levees were breached, allowing water to flood New Orleans. Under the simulation, called "Hurricane Pam," the officials "had to deal with an imaginary storm that destroyed more than half a million buildings in New Orleans and forced the evacuation of a million residents," the Reuters report said.

In 2002 the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a five-part series exploring the vulnerability of the city. The newspaper, and other news media as well, specifically addressed the possibility of massive floods drowning residents, destroying homes and releasing toxic chemicals throughout the city. (Read: "Times-Picayune" Special Report: Washing away)

Scientists long have discussed this possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.

On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."

"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."

Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."

He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings....

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

Katrina made landfall on Monday, August 29.

Thousands Await Help While Feds Shift Blame

Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting,White House Shifts Blame to State and Local Officials: Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management.

President Bush authorized the dispatch of 7,200 active-duty ground troops to the area -- the first major commitment of regular ground forces in the crisis -- and the Pentagon announced that an additional 10,000 National Guard troops will be sent to Louisiana and Mississippi, raising the total Guard contingent to about 40,000....

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible: A 47-year-old grandmother was rocking a grandchild.

"These people look at us and wonder why we stayed behind," said Carmita Stephens. "Well, would they leave their grandparents and children behind? Look around and say, 'See you later'?" She gave a roll of the eyes behind the raised voice.

"We had one vehicle. A truck. I wanted my family to be together. They all couldn't fit in the truck. We had to decide on leaving family members -- or staying."

She shifted the grandchild in her arms. "I'm living paycheck to paycheck. My mother passed away this year. I was helping take care of her. My real job was as a private-duty caregiver. I had one patient. He died two weeks after my mother passed, on May 6." She calculated that the family made a little more than $2,500 a month -- but that included help from her son Jamel's job. "He's missing now," she added. "So is Eric Stephens, my husband."

They were soon to be Texas-bound. "And I don't even like Texas," she said.

Living Paycheck to Paycheck Made Leaving Impossible

To those who wonder why so many stayed behind when push came to water's mighty shove here, those who were trapped have a simple explanation: Their nickels and dimes and dollar bills simply didn't add up to stage a quick evacuation mission.

'Me and my wife, we were living paycheck to paycheck, like most everybody else in New Orleans,' Eric Dunbar, 54, said Saturday....

He offered a mini-tutorial in the economic reality of his life.

"I don't own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife." Her name is Dorth Dunbar; she was trying to get some rest after days of peril.

Dunbar estimated his annual income to be about $20,000, which comes from doing graphic design work when he can get it. Before the storm, when he and his wife estimated how much money they needed to flee the city, he was saddened by the reality that he could not come up with anywhere near the several thousand dollars he might need for a rental car and airfare.

"If I took my wife out to dinner, it was once a month," he said, sounding as if even those modest good times had come to an abrupt end. "We'd go to Piccadilly's. Never any movies. Really, it's a simple life. I go to work, come home, talk to my wife, go to bed, then back to work again. A basic existence."...

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top: ...DHS [Department fo Homeland Security] did not ask the U.S. military to assist in pre-hurricane evacuation efforts, despite well-known estimates that a major hurricane would cause levees in New Orleans to fail. In an interview, the general charged with operations for the military's Northern Command said such a request to help with the evacuation "did not come our way."

"At the point that we were all watching the evacuation and the clogged Interstate 10 going to the west on Sunday, we were watching the storm very carefully," Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe said. "At that time, it was a Category 5 storm and we knew that it would be among the worst storms to ever hit the United States. . . . I knew there was an excellent chance of flooding."

Others who went out of their way to offer help were turned down, such as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who told reporters his city had offered emergency, medical and technical help as early as last Sunday to FEMA but was turned down. Only a single tank truck was requested, Daley said. Red tape kept the American Ambulance Association from sending 300 emergency vehicles from Florida to the flood zone, according to former senator John Breaux (D-La.) They were told to get permission from the General Services
Administration. "GSA said they had to have FEMA ask for it," Breaux told CNN. "As a result they weren't sent."...

Fish rots from the head down

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top: The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists....

Editorials Slam Federal Response

--San Antonio (Texas) Express News

'On Tuesday, one day after the hurricane struck, Bush delivered a speech on the 60th anniversary of V-J Day, determined to stick to his agenda. Nothing would interrupt his schedule. Not even a catastrophe.

'It was a telling moment. When the country needed a president, it got a politician. There is a big difference. A politician provides rhetoric; a president provides comfort and reassurance....

'Times-Picayune' Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief and Others

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, were going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism....

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame....

Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too....

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

...The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week....

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

...The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?...

The Washington Looting of New Orleans

...New Orleans will not be lost forever like Atlantis. Salvaging New Orleans could prove to be a process which fuels the revamping of the corrupted Washington decision-making process. It could spur the salvation of all cities which collectively constitute the core of our modern American civilization. The process must begin with less focus on bread and water looters and more scrutiny of the Washington leadership which has for decades allowed the continuous looting of the federal treasury to enrich the small percentage of the population not dependent on cities....

Bill Clinton, Suck-Up-in-Chief

What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking, standing there next to President Bush and providing verbal cover for the administration's ludicrous claims that the problems plaguing New Orleans were unforeseeable?...

The big disconnect on New Orleans

Diverging views of a crumbling New Orleans emerged Thursday, with statements by some federal officials in contradiction with grittier, more desperate views from the streets....

The Rebellion of the Talking Heads

Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling. By Jack Shafer

Local Officials Criticize Federal Government Over Response

New York Times: Mr. Compass said the federal government had taken too long to send in the thousands of troops - as well as the supplies, fuel, vehicles, water and food - needed to stabilize his now "very, very tenuous" city.

Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, concurred and he was particularly pungent in his criticism. Asserting that the whole recovery operation had been 'carried on the backs of the little guys for four goddamn days,' he said 'the rest of the goddamn nation can't get us any resources for security.'

'We are like little birds with our mouths open and you don't have to be very smart to know where to drop the worm,' Colonel Ebbert said. 'It's criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren't force-feeding us. It's like FEMA has never been to a hurricane.' FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen?

'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues: New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA 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. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Wesley Clark

TPMCafe || It all comes back to leadership: "In short leadership is everything we are not getting from this White House. Instead of challenging us to push ourselves to accomplish great things, we get platitudes. We can do better than that."

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes

New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes: ...An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

'I don't treat my dog like that,' 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.

'You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people,' he added. 'You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here.'

The Independent Weekly: Disaster in the making

This was published on September 22nd, 2004:

The Independent Weekly: Disaster in the making: As FEMA weathers a storm of Bush administration policy and budget changes, protection from natural hazards may be trumped by "homeland security"

Thanks to Josh Marshall

Can you guess when was this written?

I'll give you a hint, it was not in 2005:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV 'storm teams' warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however--the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level--more than eight feet below in places--so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't--yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City.

So much for Bush's lame "no one could have anticipated..." excuse.

And, by the way, isn't Bush's job to plan for contigencies, particularly when it comes to 'protection of the Vaterland'? Oh yeah, he was on v-a-c-a-t-i-o-n.

But then BushCo is on a permanent vacation from reality at all times.