politics

And the Winner of the All Time Best Hall Pass Request Award is…

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… our president of course. He is always winning great awards such as these. I first saw the photo below on Chris’s site and it has been much blogged about. I thought and still think it is hysterical. See for yourself below:

I didn’t want to post it because I wasn’t sure if it was real or not and if I was in a meeting with 180 other world leaders and needed to pee, I’m not sure what I would have done either. Then, Neu swooped in, unknowing, and sent me an article from Photo District News titled “Reuters Explains Photo Of Bush Bathroom Note” verifying it and voila! I love the statement that Reuters gave:

“The photographer and editors on this story were looking for other angles in their coverage of this event, something that went beyond the stock pictures of talking heads that these kind of forums usually offer. This picture certainly does that.”

Indeed. I don’t really has anything else to add on this one.

Via Chris and Neu

politics

He’s Just The Acorn – You’ve Got To Look At The Tree

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From “The Nation” comes a report on Barbara Bush’s Labor Day visit to the Astrodome:

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees — cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases — former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

“Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them,” Mrs. Bush told American Public Media’s “Marketplace” program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.

On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.

Thanks Phyl for making sure that my anger doesn’t dissipate.

Remember, if you are in need of info on the Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort happening in NYC, go to www.nolareliefnyc.com for all the latest news.

ramblings

Fallujah, LA (formerly known as New Orleans)

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It just keeps getting worse and worse. If I were to tell you about a city that: has no power, has no clean water, has no food, has no working infrastructure, consists mainly of rubble, has dead bodies laying about in the streets, has rampant lawlessness, is controlled by armed bands of people roving the streets and has people shooting at helicopters you might name a city in Iraq. You would never have named a U.S. city, until today that is: what I just described is happening RIGHT NOW in New Orleans. The reason why the scariest horror stories to me are books like The Stand and movies like 28 Days Later is because our society is so loosely held together – in the end it only takes so very little to rip it all to shreds. The animal side of humanity can take over so quickly and things can go from bad to worse to atrocious in no time. We are seeing this first hand by watching Nawlins become a third world country.

This is from an AP report dated today, filed at 2:02 PM:

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. “I buried my dog.” He added: “You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”

To echo those sentiments, the NY Times published an absolutely scathing editorial lambasting our dear President’s performance over the past few days. To give you an idea of how angry the Times (and I am) is, here are the first 2 sentences:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed.

Again, we’re told with a smirk that everything will be alright by someone who has less than zero credibility. Where is the LA National Guard, which could have been deployed to help prevent what has happened from happening? Oh yeah, they are fighting a losing war in Iraq. The authorities should have very quickly realized that the poorest and most desperate (not just before this storm hit mind you) part of the city’s population was not leaving. Its tough to think that your citizens will become animals but you always have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. Seems as if that wasn’t done that well down south from where I’m sitting.

politics

“You Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round…

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…like a record baby right round right round” by Dead or Alive should be the Bush White House’s anthem. Here’s a bit of history (courtesy of the NY Times) which says why:

  • In September 2003, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan said flatly that Karl Rove had not been involved in disclosing [at the time covert CIA agent and diplomat’s wife] Valerie Plame’s name [which is a federal offense].
  • Asked about the issue on Sept. 29, 2003, Mr. McClellan said he had “spoken with Karl Rove,” and that it was “simply not true” that Mr. Rove had a role in the disclosure of her identity. Two weeks earlier, he had called suggestions that Mr. Rove had been involved “totally ridiculous.”
  • On Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department opened its formal investigation, Mr. McClellan told reporters that Mr. Rove, Mr. Abrams and Mr. Libby had nothing to do with the leak.
  • Mr. McClellan and Mr. Bush have both made clear that leaking Ms. Plame’s identity would be considered a firing offense by the White House. Mr. Bush was asked about that position most recently a little over a year ago, when he was asked whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked the officer’s name. “Yes,” he replied, on June 10, 2004.
  • Yesterday, July 11, 2005, the White House refused to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove’s role in the matter. Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying White House Spokesman Scott McClellan was “in a bad spot here” because he had spoken from the same podium in the White House briefing room on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials – Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff – were involved. Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.

I would believe this administration as far as I could throw a piano left handed.

politics

More Election 2004 Info

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I have a feeling that I’m going to be posting info about the 2004 election for a long, long time. I still need to post about how both the Red Sox and George Bush won this year – I mean, what else will happen? Will the magnetic poles flip sometime before New Year’s Eve? That isn’t supposed to happen for another 10,000 years or so but who knows, it’s been that kind of year.

Here are two things that I was sent today that I would like to share, the first is funny and the second will really make you think:

>> A proposed cover of Time Magazine that probably won’t be published anytime soon.

>> An interesting comparison of maps. In one corner, a map of the U.S. Pre-Civil War. In the other corner, a map of how the country voted this year.

Thanks Phyllis for sending

politics

Election 2004: Gore Vidal's take on it BEFORE it happened

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I’m not sure who MC is in the exchange before but GV is Gore Vidal. It would be scary if the election was still coming up but now that we know we are going to suffer through another 4 years of GWB, its downright frightening. Read below:

MC: Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?

GV: No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don’t want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn’t their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption? So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can’t lose.

MC: But Gore, aren’t you still enough of a believer in the democratic instincts of ordinary people to think that, in the end, those sorts of conspiracies eventually fall apart?

GV: Oh no! I find they only get stronger, more entrenched. Who would have thought that Harry Truman’s plans to militarize America would have come as far as we are today? All the money we have wasted on the military, while our schools are nowhere. There is no health care; we know the litany. We get nothing back for our taxes. I wouldn’t have thought that would have lasted the last 50 years, which I lived through. But it did last.

GV: But getting back to Bush. If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office. He’s made every error you can. He’s wrecked the economy. Unemployment is up. People can’t find jobs. Poverty is up. It’s a total mess. How does he make such a mess? Well, he is plainly very stupid. But the people around him are not. They want to stay in power.

MC: You paint a very dark picture of the current administration and of the American political system in general. But at a deeper, more societal level, isn’t there still a democratic underpinning?

GV: No. There are some memories of what we once were. There are still a few old people around who remember the New Deal, which was the last time we had a government that showed some interest in the welfare of the American people. Now we have governments, in the last 20 to 30 years, that care only about the welfare of the rich.

MC: Is Bush the worst president we’ve ever had?

GV: Well, nobody has ever wrecked the Bill of Rights as he has. Other presidents have dodged around it, but no president before this one has so put the Bill of Rights at risk. No one has proposed preemptive war before. And two countries in a row that have done no harm to us have been bombed.

MC: How do you think the current war in Iraq is going to play out?

GV: I think we will go down the tubes right with it. With each action Bush ever more enrages the Muslims. And there are a billion of them. And sooner or later they will have a Saladin who will pull them together, and they will come after us. And it won’t be pretty.

Thanks Phyllis!