Holy Mother of God!!

Alex Ross does Super Grover

Bill Bennett a Moral Rock...or Compass...OR maybe it was a ROCK that went THROUGH his Moral Compass!?!

Bill Bennett, Conservative Champion and author of such books as THE BOOK OF VIRTUES, Moral Compass, and THE CHILDREN'S BOOK OF VIRTUES has a radio show. A couple days ago a conversation came up with a guest about the loss of social security revenue because so many abortions have taken place in the last 30 or so years. Not to be left out or out done in shallow, de-humanizing arguments on his own show, Mr. Bennett had this to say:

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,"
...
[that is]"an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

He has since claimed his comments were "mis-characterized". Actually, I think (regardless of the meaning of the sentences he uttered) we all have a pretty good understanding of him. Pretty pathetic for someone someone who's career is about lecturing others on morality.

New Panda to be Named

He seems to be doing ok.

the BK Boat

The Storm surge of Katrina pulled this boat out of the water and dropped it off here.

Survey: Number of millionaires hits record

Sadly, we've seen an increase of people living in poverty. thanks W.

Dozen buildings damaged when twister rakes MSU

It seems Hurricane/Tropical Storm Rita ripped more than a little havoc on the campus of Mississippi State. A tornado went through campus hitting buildings, trees, and cars. Fortunately no one was hurt. Classes have been cancelle for the time being.

Insider Trading - Bill Frist Cliff's Notes Version

• If you're Bill Frist (GOP Senate Leader and Presidential hopful), people are likely gonna watch what you are doing.
• If you're a billionaire (BiiiLLLL), don't break the law to save a few million. It'll be ok if you lose a few on investments like normal people. (i promise).
• If you want to call your investments a "Blind Trust" that means you can't OK the sales or get updates on the status of the assets.
• If you get such information early before the general public, and then sell off your stock to avoid losses...that's called insider trading.
  
• Ask Martha Stewart about it.

• Oh, and DON'T ask George W. Bush about it. His daddy was President at the time and the guy in charge of 'investigating' for the SEC was a family friend. Your daddy ain't President.
• Finally, in the weeks before you sell of the stock on the inside tip, don't get 2 dozen status reports on the stocks prior to the sell off and pretend you didn't know anything (or that the trust of yours is, in fact, blind).

OH, and finally...Senator Bill...I don't usually take Criminal Cases, but i can refer you to somebody. you might need an attorney...I hope.
--you crooked ass.

Telegraph | News | Stairway to Heaven

This, the space 'elevator', is probably the most fantastic thing i've ever heard in the way of space travel.amazing and it sems to open up remarkable possibilities for exploration (and tourism).

Bush's Crisis Itinerary at Mercy of Weather, Even Nice Weather

And they used to say Clinton tried to govern by whatever the Polls said. HA! i wish we had it that good! Bush can't decide where to do his job unless the photo-op is just right.

SAN ANTONIO, Sept. 23 - President Bush was supposed to land here on Friday afternoon on the first stop of a tour intended to make clear that he was personally overseeing the federal government's preparations for Hurricane Rita's landfall. But the weather did not cooperate.

It was too sunny.

Just minutes before Mr. Bush was scheduled to leave the White House, his aides in Washington scrubbed the stop in San Antonio. Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, explained that the search-and-rescue team that Mr. Bush had planned to meet and thank here in San Antonio was actually packing up to move closer to where the hurricane would strike.

The Place To Be: Developers Catering More To City's 'Creative Class'

A GREAT article on things developing in Jackson.

Mothers, Daughters, & Wives REJOICE!

Bush is working hard to give out free passes to people in the sex-slave trade! That is, as long as the oil keeps flowing! I guess exploited women and children can fend for themselves.

Outrageous!

WASHINGTON -President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.

Barbie Gets Koran-ic!

In certain Islamic countries women where the hijab so that their hair cannot be seen by men who are not family members. Evidently Barbie (or Fulla)'s hair is ALSO so freaking hot looking that its sex-power must be tucked away.

Rove on Vacation

Thanks to my pal Swirly, I just heard about A US News & World Report story about how Karl Rove (White House Deputy Chief of Staff) "took time off from Katrina relief to be at Aspen,"...

Well THANK GOD! i mean, its been about a WEEK since he was placed in charge of the Re-build after Katrina. I mean, who could be expected to work a WHOLE WEEK without vacation?? Its not like he has any catching up to do. The City of New Orleans and the Mississippi gulf coast couldn't possibly need him to do his job...right? And its not like he had any catching up to do, since he's never done any such work and just a couple weeks ago had been off the job for a while because of kidney stones.

Good LORD i'm tired of these politicians that behave as if their job is just a really neat version of playing 'dress up'.

"STOP, GEORGE!"

The National Enquirer is reporting that our President has been taking this whole 'being a grown-up' thing pretty hard. Iraq is a mess, then the levees break after Katrina. Evidently 'round about that time, he decided to (secretly) hit the bottle. Supposedly he was caught by the First Lady who yelled "Stop, George!"

Now, this might be a minor story (assuming its true). The problem is that Bush is an Alcoholic, and we are at risk of having a drunk at the wheel.

FINALLY Car Manufacturers are Paying Attention...

Joel Makower Reports:

On Wednesday, Bill Ford, chairman of his eponymous car company, announced that gas-electric hybrid engines will be available in “more than half” of all Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles by 2010. Ford says his company will produce 250,000 hybrid vehicles annually by 2010, an order of magnitude greater than the roughly 24,000 hybrids it now produces annually.

...

Ford also said it would:

• Promote flexible fuel vehicles and help build an ethanol infrastructure in the Midwest;
• Develop a pilot program to offset any carbon emissions involved with the actual production of hybrid vehicles; and
• Conduct a pilot consumer education program to encourage consumers to reduce carbon emissions.

That is to say: Ford isn’t just greening its cars. It’s looking at ways to green its manufacturing operations as well as its marketing communications. It’s a bold move. There’s no question that Ford was feeling the heat -- from competitors, from activists, and from its own shareholders.

Salon.com Comics | This Modern World

And here we have a few possible explanations of what went wrong concerning Katrina.

Crooks and Liars 2

Watch Phil Donahue make Bill O'Reilly's head explode.

Crooks and Liars

great site with a good clip of bill maher on tucker carlson's show. man, Tucker just seems out of his league.

My Anti-Drug Is Alcohol -- The Onion - America's Finest News Source

If you're a kid growing up these days, sooner or later, someone's going to offer you drugs. 'Go ahead, try some of these,' they'll say. 'They'll make you feel great. Come on, everybody's doing it. Don't you want to be cool?' People have told me all these things and plenty more, but I just tell them to buzz off. I tell them I don't need drugs to get high or be cool: I can do it with alcohol, my anti-drug.

Treasure...FOUND!

I am somewhat of a fan (not as much as some of my pals) of bizarre/kooky religious art. here is a new find.

So, Did We Just Fund the Largest Heist in the History of the World?

CNN.com - Minister: $1bn plundered in Iraq:

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Large-scale corruption in Iraq's ministries, particularly the defense ministry, has led to one of the biggest thefts in history with more than $1 billion going missing, Iraq's finance minister said in an interview.

How Bad is it in Iraq?

Try this on for size. 5 Soldiers were killed today in seperate instances. In addition, an American diplomat and 3 private security contractors.

One thing that seems to fly under the radar (for me as well) is the fact that Iraqi's are dying by the thousands. I'm not talking about those fighting our troops, I'm talking about in what is clearly becoming a civil war. Last week over 167 citizens of Baghdad were killed in 14 seperate bomb attacks (570 wounded). The next day 40 more died. The day after that 21 were killed. The next day? 52 were killed, followed by 7 the very next day. We done yet?

nope.

There were 30 killed (and counting) the day after. That's about 2 people an hour.

I know there are some really brave and decent Iraqi's trying to work out a democracy there, and i hope the succeed, but what, exactly has to happen before we star saying there's a civil war going on over there?

John Kerry's Speech at Brown University

Thanks to Dr. Wagner for this one. I'm not saying to much because everything i've seen today has sent me either into a rage or into a deep level of loathing that i do not like to see. here's my favorite line from the article/speech:

Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job - Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' The bottom line is simple: The 'we'll do whatever it takes' administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.

This is the Katrina administration.

ABC sued over Reality Show Suicide

This is just mean and terrible. it makes me not want to watch any reality TV show.

Time.com - Looking for a Corpse to Make a Case

What Republican sleaze.

Federal troops aren't the only ones looking for bodies on the Gulf Coast. On Sept. 9, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions called his old law professor Harold Apolinsky, co-author of Sessions' legislation repealing the federal estate tax, which was encountering sudden resistance on the Hill. Sessions had an idea to revitalize their cause, which he left on Apolinsky's voice mail: '[Arizona Sen.] Jon Kyl and I were talking about the estate tax. If we knew anybody that owned a business that lost life in the storm, that would be something we could push back with.'

31-23

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein

Vanderbilt beat Ole Miss and all is right with the world.

Miss. State v. Tulane tonite. I can't lose.

E-mail suggests government seeking to blame ENVIRONMENTAL groups

The Clarion Ledger seems to have unearthed an internal email of the US Dept. of Justice. In the letter our Esteemed department of justice is shown to be fishing around for environmental groups to blame for the breaking of the levee in New Orleans.

In Bushworld EVERYTHING is political and EVERYTHING is built around an interest group fight. nothing is too petty for making political hay and a blame shift. Notice this comes as KARL ROVE is put in charge of the 're-build'? Who at the Dept. of Justice was was going to use this and what POSSIBLE use could there be other than finger pointing? I'm not so naive to be shocked by such tactics, but i do not care for the Department of Justice turning tricks for political hacks that want to blame environmentalists for the levees breaking. That's the sort of work Karl Rove does, and isn't he busy on the re-construction effort?

...HEY! wait a minute!!?!!

Daily Nightly: A trick of the light? - Nightly News with Brian Williams - MSNBC.com

It seems New Orleans got power...long enough for the president's speech. after that, not quite the same. Brian Williams reports from his blog:

I am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

You Know Politics Come First..

When Bush puts his Political Spin-miester in charge of the rebuidl:

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.

THANK GOD We're in Iraq!!

...'cause there's nothing else anywhere in the world more important to be and there's no other country that was more of a threat to us anywhere in the world.

Iran is willing to provide other Islamic nations with nuclear technology, Iran's hard-line president said Thursday.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments after meeting Turkey's prime minister on the sidelines of a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Ahmadinejad repeated promises that Iran will not pursue nuclear weapons, IRNA reported. Then he added: 'Iran is ready to transfer nuclear know-how to the Islamic countries due to their need.'

He Was Up All Night

Stumbled across this great photo today.

Shaq Slams Crime!

I like Shaq more than Kobe (thanks swirly).

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Shaquille O'Neal provided an assist to police over the weekend, trailing a man who allegedly assaulted a gay couple before alerting an arresting officer.

The 7-foot-1 Miami Heat center, who is in the process of becoming a Miami Beach reserve officer, was driving on South Beach around 3 a.m. Sunday. He saw a passenger in a car yell anti-gay slurs at the couple, who were walking, said Bobby Hernandez, a spokesman for the Miami Beach Police Department.

The man then got out of the car and threw a bottle, hitting one of the pedestrians, who was not seriously hurt. The man got back in the car, which sped off. O'Neal followed, flagging down an officer who made an arrest, Hernandez said.

Michael Gonzalez, 18, was arrested on charges of aggravated assault and assault with a deadly weapon. The driver of the car was not charged.

O'Neal, who hopes to be a police chief or county sheriff one day, was already being fitted for his Miami Beach police uniform before he helped the police out.

"For this incident I don't want to be credited as an individual who does police work," O'Neal said in a statement. "I want to be credited as a Miami Beach police officer."

from the pages of PrettyFakes comes...video

Thanks to my good friend Herman Rarebell. He recently found this video regarding some shocking moments out of the hurricane. Some of this aired as we had no power, so i have no idea if you saw it. keep watching, esp. the part where Shepard Smith gets a bit mad with Sean Hannity (how hard is THAT to do?).

How Embarassing

Reuters - U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14,

Woman 'locked away for 25 years'

Probably one of the saddest things i've heard in a while:

Woman 'locked away for 25 years'
By Sandeep Sahu
BBC News, Bhubaneswar

Annapurna Sahu is recovering in hospital. A 43-year-old Indian woman has been rescued after officials said she had been locked up by her family in a single room for more than 25 years.

UPDATE!!

Congrats to Ben Marble, a Physician in Gulfport. He was the one that told Dick Cheney to "go fuck" himself on live TV during the VP's photo-op. Dr. Marble lost his house in the storm.

Where ever you are Ben, kudos to you!

What I'm Mad About Today

Sweet Lord. i'm not necessarily for or against insurance companies, but you'd think there were a FEW things more important to deal with right now than plainly making out with the insurance industry in the halls of the Mississippi Legislature. Here's a recent Democratic Press Release:

GOP Legislators Lead Love-Fest For Insurance Industry During Meeting

Democratic Member Rebuffed When Topic Turned
To Helping Victims Of Hurricane Katrina

While most Mississippians are focused on helping victims of Hurricane Katrina, key Republicans in the Legislature turned their efforts to helping the insurance industry make more money and celebrate their multi-million-dollar surplus.

On Monday, Republican legislators led the way during a joint-meeting of the House and Senate Insurance Committees in praising tort reform and discussing the potential buyout of the Mississippi Medical Malpractice Availability Plan (M-MAP), saying that efforts to address the devastation of Hurricane Katrina could wait until Tuesday.

"This is simply absurd," said Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Dowdy. "If you are in touch with Mississippi, your first concern is healing and rebuilding the southern part of this state."

While Republican Sens. Dean Kirby, Charlie Ross, Mike Chaney and Alan Nunnelee bragged about how tort reform has made insurance companies millions of dollars and touted the state's "urgent need" to get out of the "insurance business" by selling off M-MAP, the president of the company seeking to buy out M-MAP expressed surprise that he was even meeting with the committee just two weeks after a hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast.

"I was thinking this wasn't a priority for Mississippi right now," Richard Welch, president of Best Practices Insurance Management Services, told committee members when asked to speak.

When Democratic Rep. Dirk Dedeaux, whose district encompasses portions of the Gulf Coast, tried to steer the discussion to what the state can do to tide the loss of physicians and other professionals from the coast, he was curtly rebuffed, being told that there was no shortage of doctors on the coast and that most physicians would be back to normal within a few months. One presenter replied that the Legislature had already done the best it could to help hurricane victims: "You passed tort reform."

"Two weeks have gone by, and some elements of the Legislature are back to their divisive, partisan rhetoric," Dowdy said. "I believe, especially in a time of tragedy, that there is more that unites us than divides us. It is that which unites us as a people with a common goal of raising humanity from the terrible blow we have been dealt on which we should be focused.

"I sincerely hope, and do honestly trust, there are other Republicans in the Legislature who are more focused on the plight of common Mississippians than on the plight of overly wealthy insurance companies."

The joint-meeting continues today, with relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims to be discussed at the end. The agenda contains representatives of medical associations, manufacturing associations and the insurance industry. Noticeably missing from the agenda were any advocates for workers and individual Mississippians.

You Too Could be Qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice?

OF COURSE! just look at this long list of accomplishments from the Post:

John G. Roberts Jr. built a golden reputation as a "lawyer's lawyer" without doing most of the things that lawyers do. He never filed a lawsuit, addressed a jury, cross-examined a witness, took a deposition or negotiated a deal. He never advised a client on a tax return, a plea bargain, a restraining order, a will or a divorce. If he ever got into a confrontation with opposing counsel, no one seems to remember it.

That is because Roberts has spent most of his career as a star -- by all accounts, a superstar -- in the most rarified constellation of the legal galaxy, the exclusive club of Supreme Court appellate specialists. Now that Roberts has been nominated to sit on the court as its leader instead of standing before it as an advocate, his 17-year membership in that genteel, apolitical, almost academic club of overachievers may reveal more about his legal mind than his six-year stint as a brash, young Reagan administration aide or his two-year tenure as a federal judge.

There are 1 million lawyers in America, but only about two dozen Supreme Court specialists, nearly all white, nearly all male, nearly all based in Washington.

President's Approval Rating Dips Below 40

WASHINGTON - President Bush's job approval has dipped below 40 percent for the first time in the AP-Ipsos poll, reflecting widespread doubts about his handling of gasoline prices and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Nearly four years after Bush's job approval soared into the 80s after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was at 39 percent job approval in an AP-Ipsos poll taken this week. That's the lowest since the the poll was started in December 2003."

Yes Indeed

Just Watch

A video timeline. Tell me who seemed to understand what was going on. This stuff is about as important as it gets. particularly if you live in NYC or Major Metropolitan areas in California

Anybody see The Daily Show? PLUS UPDATES!

I did, and i saw one of my happiest moments in Mississippi. Dick Cheney was down here for a post storm photo-op...only The Daily Show had the full feed where disgruntled Mississippians started yelling (while the cameras were rolling) that Cheney should go fuck himself.

In his defense, cheney did say he was watching this whole week with his eyes glued to the TV. you know, i mean, he's just the VP, its not like he could have done anything more helpful than watch TV.

yeah, you're right. Cheney...go fuck yourself.

JUST IN! you can see the video HERE (uncensored) via my pal at Magnolia Politics and crooks and Liars.

Hell, The Daily Show is on a Roll. check THIS out. OUTSTANDING.

OK, one more if you wanna see somebody squirm.

My Job is to be Pissed Off -or- Why You Should Listen to Track 3 on Marvin Gaye's I WANT YOU album--After the Dance (instrumental prelude).

I'm going to take a break from the news. at least the bush/hurricane/political/dispair/whatever news. We'll see how long that lasts. i'm a little emotionally overloaded, and for better or worse, that tends to be my job. In my everyday life, my job seems to be about fighting. I bill myself, or at least my work as "solving problems". That's what I do. You want to get elected? You want to make a legal headache go away? you want to learn how to give speeches or handle yourself publicly? I fix those problems.

The part that i'm not really saying there is that about 100% of the time, someone else LIKES those problems and doesn't want them fixed. Every day I have to be mean, sweet, crafty, a bully, an unsure young man, a wise player, or simply create and use peer pressure like a brick with my contemporaries. Most of the people I deal with are damn sure of themselves and usually have decent sized egos. It is tiring.

Sooo...at least for today I'm going to TRY and talk about things unrelated to Politics or the Storm today. I tried that below with the Chris Ware article. maybe a little more. Right now, I can tell you this: Marvin Gaye's album "I Want You" is the best thing he ever did and perhaps one of the best albums of all time. I think i could close my eyes and hear that thing on repeat all day. my, but if i could do that today.

I Love New Orelans

Taken last night. Pretty.

KATRINA TIMELINE

OK, if you want to know what happened and when it happened, look here. draw your own conclusions as to who dropped the ball.

Salon.com Books: The Inimitable Chris Ware

There is a New Acme Novelty Library book coming out. I tend to find Chris Ware's work something both hard to consume and a joy to behold. Often his stories are uncomfortable and reading them can be somewhat exhaustive because, to truly understand what is being conveyed, the reader must study...and i mean STUDY the page. each page.

None-the-less, it is a reward and a warm education to read his stories...or perhaps it is better to say "behold his stories". Format and design are as much (if not more) of the narrative as the words on the page. It is hard, in my mind, to objectively review his stories as the notion of traditional 'plots' are so dominated the awe inspiring technique, you feel you're committing some heresy (or at least showing you have no palate for real art) if you dare say, even to yourself, "i don't know if i like this story." Well, for the most part, the stories are great--even if they aren't always comfortable. I recently re-read the Daniel Raeburn biography/critical review of the artist called, simply "Chris Ware". it is both a revelation and an inspiration in my own artistically oafish hands. When I read it, observed it, I wanted to share it with someone, anyone who could share my amazement. The review of Ware's new book is found on the link above. here are a few excerpts showing the intricacy at work here:

Start with the cover: a gilt-embossed design that features "the world's smallest comic strip," 110 tiny panels about love, death and heartbreak, printed not on the front or back cover -- or even the spine -- but the edge of the hard cover itself.
--
It's staggering -- the sort of work that would singlehandedly establish another artist's career -- and Ware's only started showing off. The centerpiece of "The Acme Novelty Library" is a long, wordless story about the pudgy, masked, omnipotent character that Ware sometimes calls "God" or "Superman" in his comics. (He's not named here, and the story isn't mentioned in the otherwise detailed table of contents.) It occupies 12 pages in the middle of the book, and fragments of other pages. Near the story's end, the character is in a prison cell, scraping little drawings onto the cinder blocks with a nail. Then Ware pulls back, so we can see hundreds of stick figures on the wall. If you're willing to stare at the panel hard and long enough to risk eye damage, you'll see that he's drawn a microscopic stick-figure version of the entire story up to that point. We are not worthy.

Bush's First Attempt to Bring Aid was Just a Staged Photo Op.

Evidently CNN isn't reporting the story that the foreign press is covering. When Bush left at the "open air food dsitribution point" after his photo op, the whole charade was abandoned and dismantled. no more crews to film the faked set up, so why even bother?

It has also been reported that Condi Rice was busy in NYC during this disaster taking in a show and shoe shopping. audience members booed her as the lights came up and a woman was carted out of the shoe store for asking how she dared to shoe shop when people were dying in New Orleans.

Seems the Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff claims he DIDN'T KNOW it would be so bad down in New Orleans. His words? The Storm (one of the strongest on record) “exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.” Actually no. it didn'tIf you're that stupid, you should be fired now.

**The thing that should be most alarming for ANYONE outside of this storm ravaged area is the quote above. ALL OF THE PLANNERS knew or should have known about this. if your city (Seattle, LA, San Fran, NYC, etc) is hit by a terrorist attack. I mean something serious like a dirty bomb that requires a city to be evacuated from the radiation, this is AS GOOD AS YOU CAN EXPECT TO HAVE IT. Unlike a hurricane, a bomb won't be satellite tracked for weeks with a count down to its occurance. THESE PEOPLE are in charge of our public welfare and they are woefully incompetent. They clearly had no plan. NO PLAN and no willingness to react to a disaster!

Tom Tomorrow hit it dead on when he said "I guess this is what you get when you elect leaders ideologically committed to the notion that government isn't good for anything."

Bush is here with the Money Quotes for the week:

1. After ordering Air Force One to do a low flyover the city (on the way back from a fundraiser vacation--you know, important stuff). Our President was quoted as saying "This was a natural disaster.” (evidently he later correctly identified the color blue and the Letter "G").

2. “I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” GOOD GOD! that is the entire fear associated with Hurricanes and New Orleans over the last few decades (centuries?). I don't want to hear that shit from President "Notmyfault" Bush.

***I'm tired of this man-child playing president like a kid plays 'army' by putting on an old G.I.'s helmet. We have to get the grown-ups back in charge. This is a nation of living breathing people. Not a political football that gets passed when the photo ops dry up.

GOP Politicians Will Help Get Relief Funds for MS First.

This is pretty unfair. I live in Mississippi. I've spent a week without power. Our state knows trouble, but we do not have the level of devistation that's occured in New Orleans. This is not to downplay the utter destruction we have in Mississippi. there are scores of towns and communities that have been simply washed away. the situation here REMAINS desperate, but to divert funds away from New Orleans and Louisiana, particularly because their senior senator and governor are Democrats is pretty unseemly. The government should be working where needed, as needed. No one should expect any more or less.

AOL News - GOP Politicians Will Help Get Relief Funds: "WASHINGTON (AP) - A triumvirate of Republican power brokers may give Mississippi first dibs in the post-Hurricane Katrina grab for federal disaster funds even though the federal government focused its initial response to the storm on New Orleans.

The state's senior senator, Thad Cochran, is the new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the panel charged with determining how much and where the recovery money will be spent."

The Buck Stops ANYWHERE But Here.

Bush has been taking some hits for the poor job FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) and the Dept. of Homeland Security (which is swallowing up FEMA's duties) has done so far.

Well, if you worried that the President was going to get straight to work and take responsibility for fixing these dire problems, REST YOUR PRETTY HEAD! there's always someone else to BLAME!

Karl Rove has dispatched George W. Bush back to Louisiana and Mississippi this morning, presumably with marching orders to show the sort of respect and compassion he failed to muster his first time around last week. Meanwhile, all the president's men -- and the president himself -- are trying to shift the blame for the Katrina response from the White House to state and local officials.

As usual, however, the White House spin game is a little less than honest. The Washington Post reported on Sunday morning that a "senior Bush official" had complained that, as of Saturday, the governor of Louisiana -- who just happens to be a Democrat -- had not yet declared a state of emergency. Kathleen Blanco, meet Cindy Sheehan. Or Joseph Wilson. Or Paul O'Neill. Or John McCain.

Only this time, the media is on to the game, at least belatedly. As Scott Rosenberg notes, Gov. Blanco did, in fact, declare a state of emergency. She did it on Aug. 26, when George W. Bush was on vacation. The Washington Post has posted a correction.

Yes, you can still get a drink in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (Reuters) -- At least two bars in New Orleans' fabled French Quarter are honoring the tradition that drinking establishments in the boisterous tourist district stay open during hurricanes, even apocalyptic monsters like Hurricane Katrina.

Molly's at the Market shut down the evening of August 28 as Katrina bore down on New Orleans. The storm struck the city with damaging winds that night, then floodwaters began to seep in through levee breaches on the north end of town the next day.

Except for wind damage, the Quarter stayed high and dry and so did Molly's and Johnny White's. And both were back in business Monday, August 29, with little apparent damage despite a lack of electricity and running water.

'That's our job. That's just what we do,' Molly's owner Jim Monaghan, 47, said.

Molly's somehow managed to serve iced drinks Sunday to a mixed crowd of die-hard locals, visiting authorities and the media gaggle. Monaghan wouldn't say where he got the ice, and any inquisitors didn't much care.

Halliburton: Never to Busy to Make a Buck off the Dead

If you fail the Bush Administration, you get promoted! heck, that's the President's life story and he's going to share. Seems that Halliburton can't lose financially if other people are dying.

An Arlington-based Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc., won the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters.

Jan Davis, a spokeswoman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said yesterday that KBR would receive $12 million for work at the Naval Air Station at Pascagoula, Miss., the Naval Station at Gulfport, Miss., and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. KBR will receive $4.6 million for work at two smaller Navy facilities in New Orleans and others in the South.">Halliburton Subsidiary Taps Contract For Repairs: "An Arlington-based Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has been criticized for its reconstruction work in Iraq has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc., won the competitive bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters.

Jan Davis, a spokeswoman for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said yesterday that KBR would receive $12 million for work at the Naval Air Station at Pascagoula, Miss., the Naval Station at Gulfport, Miss., and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. KBR will receive $4.6 million for work at two smaller Navy facilities in New Orleans and others in the South.

Guardsmen 'played cards' amid New Orleans chaos: police official

Look at that Photo. a few of the tens of thousands of people stranded with no way to escape the flood waters. I've heard too many first hand accounts of families trapped in attics when trying to escape the rising water, only to have no way to escape the refuge they found. In Chalmette 100 people died waiting on rescuers. know why? no food or water. Whoever thought that 40 trucks was enough of a rescue mission should be jailed. not fired, jailed. to think anyone with such a job would betray the city like that.
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NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - A top New Orleans police officer said that National Guard troops sat around playing cards while people died in the stricken city after Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans deputy police commander W.S. Riley launched a bitter attack on the federal response to the disaster though he praised the way the evacuation was eventually handled.
...

'We expected a lot more support from the federal government. We expected the government to respond within 24 hours. The first three days we had no assistance,' he told AFP in an interview.

Riley went on: 'We have been fired on with automatic weapons. We still have some thugs around. My biggest disappointment is with the federal government and the National Guard.

'The guard arrived 48 hours after the hurricane with 40 trucks. They drove their trucks in and went to sleep.

'For 72 hours this police department and the fire department and handful of citizens were alone rescuing people. We have people who died while the National Guard sat and played cards. I understand why we are not winning the war in Iraq if this is what we have.'

Riley said there is "a semblance of organisation now."

"The military is here and they have done an excellent job with the evacuation" of the tens of thousands of people stranded in the city.

The National Guard commander said the city police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm strength.

"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters in Washington.

"Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theatre."

On Friday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin denounced the slow federal response as too little, too late, charging that promised troops had not arrived in time.

"Now get off your asses and let's do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country," the mayor said in remarks aired on CNN.

Blum said that since Thursday some 7,000 National Guard and military police had moved into the city.
President George W. Bush on Saturday ordered an additional 7,000 active duty and reserve ground troops.

Blum said any suggestion that the National Guard had not performed well or was late was a "low blow".

The initial priority of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard forces was disaster relief, not law enforcement, because they expected the police to handle that, he said.

The police commander was unable to give a death toll for New Orleans.

"We have bodies all over the city. A federal mortuary team was supposed to come in within 24 hours. We haven't seen them. It is inhumane. This is just not America."

Riley said he did not even know how many police remained from a normal force of 1,700.

"Many officers lost their homes or their families and there are many we have not heard from. Some officers could not handle the pressure and left. I don't know if we have 800 or thousands today.

The Times-Picayune Calls for Firing of FEMA Chief and I Agree.

Seems everyone from Wal-Mart to Harry Connick, Jr. could get to New Orleans for help. Everyone but the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Where was Bush the day after Katrina hit? There on the scene leading the charge...? uh, no. He was in Southern California doing a Fundraiser. Good to see the priorities, Jerk.

Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re 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.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

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.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" 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.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

Quick Note From Polly & the Mooch

As most of you know, we're down because of the Hurricane.

Our house had a tree crash into it after destroying our garage. we still have no power and the water is just now (i believe i heard that right) safe to drink. its been roasting outside and we ran out of propane to cook with. Luckily pals Jah and Wah did come by and check on us. they have power now and they helped us clean some of the debris. I cannot thank them enough for being such good people. also Dr. Wagner and family who provided a grill to cook up the last of our food and a place to shower when their place.

My mother lives in Diamondhead, MS which, if you didn't know, is pretty well dead center for where the storm hit. she moved there about 2 weeks ago. I had not heard her voice until last night when I found she had made it to alabama. We have no idea if her new home still stands.

No one in my family had heard from my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins that live in or around Houma, LA. i have no idea how bad they were hit there and none of use know if they're alive.

i will check back here when i get power again or if find another computer that's loaned to me. otherwise, take care all.