aflam: septembre 2005

vendredi 30 septembre 2005

Sydney Sandwich Social

Seared chorizo and peppery rocketLast Saturday Saffron and I co-hosted the first ever Sydney Sandwich Social.The premise was simple. Everyone brings a sandwich and swaps half of it for another. Creativity was encouraged, but the classics were welcomed as well.Our idea wasn't original, but it sure was fun. Who doesn't reminisce those sandwich swapping days of the schoolyard?I packed two types of

Sydney Sandwich Social

Reversal of Fortune? Reversal of Something.

Well, Judith Miller's out of jail. I'm inspired to repeat myself about how I feel regarding this whole thing.

After being locked up in jail for nearly three months, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released on Thursday after agreeing to testify before a grand jury investigating who in the Bush administration leaked a covert
CIA operative's name.

...

According to her attorneys, Miller, an investigative reporter who covers national security and foreign policy issues, has been in a U.S. jail longer than any other newspaper journalist to protect a source.

Excuse me? "Protect a source"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that whole "protect a source" thing is supposed to keep a source safe if they're revealing an illegal activity so that it can be exposed to the public, and lawmakers. It is not, as far as I know, intended to keep a reporter from having to testify about a crime he or she has taken part in that didn't even result in a newspaper article.

The Plame expose wasn't for the public good, it was for the private detriment of two US citizens - citizens who work for the greater good of the country. Miller went to jail, all right, but claiming the nobility of protecting a journalitsic source? Not hers to claim, my friends, not hers to claim.

jeudi 29 septembre 2005

Margaret Cho's Blog

Now, I'm not normally the type to read blogs of famous people, but this morning I was playing the "blogroll hopping" game. I went to the blog of someone who's been visiting me, and that blog had Margaret Cho blogrolled. So, I started reading. It's oddly like reading Shakepeare's Sister, but with a pink color scheme and a bunch of ads for Margaret Cho stuff on the sides. I was reading along happily when I came across a paragraph that I thought I'd like to share with those of you who I assume aren't reading Margaret's blog regularly, either:

I never had any soft feelings for Barbara Bush. She looks like a Grandma and a Grandpa at the same time, which would normally make me like her, but for some reason, her politics make her Quaker Oats appearance unappealing. She'’s like hot breakfast cereal sprinkled with broken glass and fake compassion. She is like a multigrain muffin with cranberries and thumbtacks. She is the former first lady and the current worst lady. And she is not working well for me.

It's a piece about Mrs. Bush's comments about how Hurricane Katrina was "working out well" for the poor. (Ugh.) Nice Summary!

Mmmango

Today I relished every sticky mouthful of my first mango of the season.Mangoes epitomise summer to me. Their cheerful golden colour like sunshine, their irresistable heady perfume, their inevitable stickiness of messy consumption. Summer isn't summer unless you've licked all your sticky fingers and only then noticed the mango stain on your t-shirt.When I lived in London I couldn't understand why

Mmmango

mercredi 28 septembre 2005

Bourke Street Bakery, Broadway

Olive, rosemary and salt crust flatbreadThere is something to be said for good quality baked bread.Something like ngh mrph nj mmnh *ahhhh*Or perhaps just a simple "More".At the moment I'm in the middle of reading Not On The Label by Felicity Lawrence, and the chapter on commercial breads has me craving the nourishing satisfaction of lovingly proved and nurtured real bread.Thank goodness for

Bourke Street Bakery, Broadway

Solving the Democrat Problem

Remember last year when Jill was just damn tired of the Democrats never getting it together? Well, so is Tata.

I'm still sitting on the left, in the same place I always have, the place where education bills aren't boobie-trapped and workers matter and women matter and the poor matter and the minority opinion matters and equality matters and the environment matters and the common good matters. Hopefully someday we'll sit together again as friends.

Jazz, over at Running Scared, also sees problems, and has some suggestions.

These elections need to see Democrats (and their progressive supporters, grassroots workers and bloggers) focusing on state specific issues more than national touch-points.

mardi 27 septembre 2005

Redefining Donation

All right, my first response to this headline was anger:
FEMA plans to reimburse faith groups for aid

FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.

Civil liberties groups called the decision a violation of the traditional boundary between church and state, accusing FEMA of trying to restore its battered reputation by playing to religious conservatives.

Charity is "a gift for public benevolent purposes", right? It's given freely without the expectation of remuneration. Charity is not work for pay, it's donations - things you've given away. Your time, your money, your goods, when you give them to charity, the most you expect in return is a tax break, and I'm thinking that during a national disaster that most people aren't taking the time for the formality of a receipt. I'm not the only one of this opinion:

"Volunteer labor is just that: volunteer," said the Rev. Robert E. Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's North American Mission Board. "We would never ask the government to pay for it."

But if you read further into the article, which of course I did, you find that the reality of this situation is a little more reasonable than the first thoughts that sprang to mind.

The government's talking about reimbursing churches and synagogues that set up shop at the request of the state, or FEMA:

FEMA officials said religious organizations would be eligible for payments only if they operated emergency shelters, food distribution centers or medical facilities at the request of state or local governments in the three states that have declared emergencies -- Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In those cases, "a wide range of costs would be available for reimbursement, including labor costs incurred in excess of normal operations, rent for the facility and delivery of essential needs like food and water," FEMA spokesman Eugene Kinerney said in an e-mail.

...

For some individual churches, however, reimbursement is very appealing. At Christus Victor Lutheran Church in Ocean Springs, Miss., as many as 200 evacuees and volunteer workers have been sleeping each night in the sanctuary and Sunday school classrooms. The church's entrance hall is a Red Cross reception area and medical clinic. As many as 400 people a day are eating in the fellowship hall.

Suzie Harvey, the parish administrator, said the church was asked by the Red Cross and local officials to serve as a shelter. The church's leadership agreed immediately, without anticipating that nearly a quarter of its 650 members would be rendered homeless and in no position to contribute funds. "This was just something we had to do," she said. "Later we realized we have no income coming in."

Harvey said the electric bill has skyrocketed, water is being used around the clock and there's been "20 years of wear on the carpet in one month." If FEMA makes money available, she said, the church definitely will apply.

Now that's a bit of a different story, isn't it? The government is proposing to pay back organizations that serve as emergency shelters at their request. It's kind of like paying for buildings that have been commandeered. That, to my way of thinking, isn't so bad.

Still, I don't trust this government. The administration gives me no reason to do so. This article's headline grabbed my attention because the government giving money to churches means one of two things:

1) There's a plan to channel government money to churches that support the insane bleeding of American funds even further (how much is the deficit now?)

or

2) They just knew that it would piss civil rights groups off and they can't resist the baiting.

IMBB #19: Strawberry and Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

The latest Is My Blog Burning challenge is to trick someone into eating something vegan.I admit it. The word 'vegan' is usefully enough inducement to emit a Mr Burns-like shudder of envisioned displeasure. Don't get me wrong. I love my vegetables. But when the word vegan is placed in front of something on the menu/blackboard/chocolate bar, it's usually a big fat warning sign to my terrified

IMBB #19: Strawberry and Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

lundi 26 septembre 2005

Reasonable Priced Reason

Hello, Brilliant readers, I'm Tami, or Tami, or Tami, whichever you prefer. I live in central New Jersey (the part that's actually kind of north, but the people who are actually in north Jersey won't claim us), a liberal, a democrat, and generally the kind of person that agrees with Jill.

Now that we got that out of the way, time to talk about me and my fascinating life some more. Last week I went to the NJ gubernatorial debate in Trenton. This week, for the amazingly low price of ten dollars, American, I got to go see the Dalai Lama. No, really.

As world leaders go, he was by far the neatest one I've ever seen. OK, I've seen exactly 2, having been at some giant speech where President Bush (Sr.) was when I was in college. Still, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that no way was Daddy Bush as cool as this guy.

He started his speech with self-effacing remarks. He told us that since the concepts of peace, war and reconciliation haven't changed, he really didn't have anything new to say. So, he said, if you're bored during the time that I'm speaking, I'm sorry. At least the weather is very pleasant, today, he said.

And then, he said the simple things that we were all there to hear him say. He said that all acts that come from compassion, those acts are peace. All acts that come from hatred, anger, jealousy - those are violence. And I understood what he meant.

He said that sometimes he thinks that Christians are better than Buddhists, because a Buddhist can choose to isolate himself from the world, rather than try to change it for the better, and still be a good Buddhist. He said that it did not offend him when someone referred to him as a good Christian.

At the end, he reminded us that if we had found his speech boring, well, it was over now, and we could go home. I now hope to one day be as cool as Tenzin Gyatzo, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.

vendredi 23 septembre 2005

Apple Cinnamon Muffins with Walnut Streusel

In addition to the pineapple coconut muffins I made last night, I also decided to make another fruit-themed batch (when baking fever hits, take full advantage!).Of the two, these were probably my favourite. The walnut crunchy streusel definitely makes it addictive.The recipe is almost the same as the pineapple coconut ones. I like the use of oil in this recipe as it means you don't have to worry

Apple Cinnamon Muffins with Walnut Streusel

We picked a good time to get the hell out of here

Tomorrow, Mr. Brilliant and I are off to the Land of Wood and Water, leaving our precious furkids and precious tract house in the care of a very good housesitter. And we couldn't have picked a better time, because betweeen Hurricane Rita, tomorrow's rally in Washington, and rumblings of a national state of emergency and martial law, I think if I were going to be here, I'd go out of my frickin' mind. So instead I'll be sitting on a balcony in Runaway Bay, drinking a pineapple juice, reading a book (it's the one week of the year I have time for fun reading), and listening to reggae.

Martial law, you say? WTF?

William Arkin's Early Warning blog at the Washington Post has some pretty hair-raising information about the Bush Administration and the Department of Defense using Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as an excuse to expand the role of the military here in the US. Go check it out.

While I'm away, The One True Tami and Gabriel from Modern Fabulousity will be doing what they can to hold down the fort.

Pineapple coconut muffins

I whipped these up tonight for our first-ever Sydney Sandwich Social tomorrow.It was only as they were cooling that I realised these were a perfect entry for the latest Tiki-themed blog party. And with the deadline recently extended by another day, well, here I am... and here's the recipe.Pineapple Coconut Muffins2 cups plain flour1 tablespoon baking powder1/2 teaspoon salt1/2 cup sugar1/2 cup

Pineapple coconut muffins

And what did they THINK would happen when evacuating this many people?

OK, wingnuts, these guys are in a state run by Republicans. I'm waiting for you to start blasting THEM.

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

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

For the most part, the officials didn't offer much analysis of what might have gone wrong. They focused instead on the scramble to keep thousands of motorists from what Mayor Bill White called a potential "death trap" should the storm strike while they were stranded on the road.

But Brazoria County Judge John Willy criticized other local officials for calling for voluntary evacuation when Brazoria was under a mandatory evacuation order. That, he said, put a lot of cars on the dedicated evacuation routes and prevented people from the south from getting out.

Gov. Rick Perry said state and local officials are trying to move more than 1.5 million people out of the storm's path, and said that despite the traffic snags, he was certain that anyone who wants to evacuate will be out of the Gulf Coast area before tropical storm winds begin to kick up at midmorning today.

"If you're in the storm's path, you need to git gone. You need to be on the road, moving out of the storm's path," he said. "Those few hardheaded ones out there who are going to ride this thing out, don't expect there to be a lot of support in those areas."

"This evacuation is historic in its proportion," Perry said.

The observation by Perry and others — that problems were inevitable in any endeavor to move more than a million people over a few routes under an emergency time frame — didn't stop criticism about how officials planned for, and implemented, the exodus.

Chief among the complaints is that officials at all levels didn't appreciate — or at least articulate — just how crowded roads would get.

Add to that the fact that the Texas Department of Transportation seemed flat-footed in effecting a contraflow plan to ease congestion by moving some outbound traffic into inbound lanes.

Why, some asked, didn't the agency time the lane reversals to coincide with the mandatory evacuations of low-lying neighborhoods and areas threatened by storm surge?

"Why wasn't TxDOT on the same page?" asked Houston City Councilman M.J. Khan, stuck for hours trying to get his elderly mother-in-law to the airport. "Yesterday morning, that should have been part of the plan."

TxDOT said its effort was hampered by the complicated nature of the task and a lack of personnel.

Officials also faced criticism because they didn't plan, or didn't plan adequately, for making sure enough gasoline was available for tens of thousands of vehicles crawling through summer heat.

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

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

I wonder what's going to happen to people who tried to evacuate and end up stranded in their cars with no gas on clogged highways when up to 30 inches of rain starts to fall?

I guess they can always blame it on Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco....

This guy is scary

If you're reading this, and you just happen to live in the 5th Congressional District of New Jersey, you should know this about our holier-than-thou Congressman: He behaves like a thug:

I picked up the phone tonight and the man on the other end said his name was Congressman Scott Garrett. I almost didn't believe it. I asked him twice if he was kidding. He confirmed it with some agitation, and then it dawned on me that he didn't like the letter I wrote in today's Express-Times blasting him for voting against Katrina hurricane relief. He was pissed. He started explaining to me that the reason he voted that way was because there was no oversight of the relief agencies, and if I had heard his remarks on the floor of the House I would have known that. Like I said. Pissed.

He asked me to write another letter saying that I now understand why he voted the way he did. He said he doesn't want his family going around thinking he's a "heartless son of a gun." But the tone of his phone call (pissed), and the fact that he called me at my home, doesn't lead me altogether away from that conclusion. Here's why:

All I really said was that he voted against the Katrina relief bill, and I expressed my opinion about it. That it sounded like a bad idea. I didn't lie about anything, and the cold-heartedness I deduced from the vote is consistent with past behaviors.

I know. I know. This is an upsetting time for everyone. You could tell that in the tone of my letter. And, to his credit, I could feel it in his voice that Mr. Garrett truly cares about the victims who are suffering on the Gulf Coast right now. But, it's not a time to be less rigorous in the scrutiny of our politicians. There is never such a time. He's a professional, responsible public figure. He made a decision. He says he understands oversight. Let's oversee him. Let him be accountable to the media. Let him explain it to the public.Oh yeah, I forgot. He's the guy that hides from debates.

Last year a Democrat named Anne Wolfe ran against Garrett. She received ZERO assistance from either the county or state Democratic party, which instead decided to shrug its shoulders and cede this seat to the most deceitful Republican this district has ever had. Anne won 41% of the vote without help.

She's running for Congress again, and STILL the party won't support her. Last week they ran a help wanted ad in the Bergen Record looking for a candidate.

And what do the wealthy have to sacrifice? Oh yeah. Nothing

Now we know who's going to have to pay for hurricane cleanup and recovery: It's the same people who always pay -- the poor, the elderly, and the grunts in the threatre of war.

The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program, eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding for new light-rail programs and cancel the president's hydrogen fuel initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools because "studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free"; and eliminate the teen funding portion of Title X, which provides "free and reduced-price contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera, and the morning-after pill" to poor teenagers.

Along the way, they'd find a way to punish -- or simply eliminate -- some of their enemies, real and imagined. They'd cut funding for the District of Columbia, eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminate subsidized student loans for graduate students, terminate the Legal Services Corporation, eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and kill the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Of course, you can't balance the budget on the backs of PBS viewers, grad students and other outside-the-mainstream liberals alone. So the Republican plan also calls for "rational reforms to Defense and Homeland Security." Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local responders and offering National Guard members the "option" to purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan.

So while the top 1% (a.k.a. "Bush's base") emerges unscathed, the 99% that constitutes the rest of us get clobbered. I especially like the idea of cutting energy conservation funds from states and "rational reforms" to defense and homeland security. This means even MORE energy use (which benefits oil company executives and NO ONE else), reductions in those security programs which these same Republicans touted after 9/11, and things that make the lives of our soldiers just a bit easier.

So can someone give me one good reason why the top 1% should be able to get off scot-free? Can someone give me one good reason why the top 1% should be exempt from ANY civic responsibility, but should instead be allowed to JUST feed from the trough? How about we cut corporate subsidies? How about we raise taxes on that one percent just one percent?

Of course we can't do that. This country is the private fiefdom of the Bush family and their friends. The rest of us just live here on their sufferance.

In the event of an actual emergency, you would have been told "You're on your own"

The Bushofascists are expending tens of thousands of keystrokes contrasting the exodus from the Houston area with the evacuation of New Orleans, using it as "proof" of Louisiana [Democratic] leader incompetence, rather than a function of fresh memories of a similar disaster making people realize that hunkering down for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane is just not a very good idea -- and of a more affluent population that can afford their own vehicles to get outta Dodge.

In fact, it's this very sea of individual gasoline-powered vehicles that create the very real possibility that some evacuees could conceivably end up stranded on Texas highways with no gas -- and up to 30 inches of rain over 48 hours anticipated.

Those who didn't leave two days ago find themselves having to drive farther and farther in bumper-to-bumper traffic to find accommodations -- and gas stations are running out of fuel.

The unprecedented flight from the flood-prone Houston area left clogged highways at a near standstill, frustrating hundreds of thousands of people whose cars and tempers were overheating.

"It can't get much worse, 100 yards an hour," steamed Willie Bayer, 70, who was heading out of Houston and trying to get to Sulphur Springs in far northeast Texas. "It's frustrating bumper-to-bumper."

The first rain bands were expected before nightfall Friday with the full fury of Rita expected into Saturday. Forecasters warned of the possibility of a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet, battering waves and rain of up to 15 inches along the Texas and western Louisiana coast.

Two communities that may bear the brunt of the storm are Beaumont, which is a petrochemical, shipbuilding and port city of about 114,000; and Port Arthur, a city of about 58,000 that's home to industries including oil, shrimping and crawfishing.

Texas officials scrambled to reroute several inbound highways to accommodate outbound traffic, but many people were waiting so long they ran out of gas and were forced to park.

"We know you're out there," Houston Mayor Bill White said of the congestion that extended well into Louisiana. "We understand there's been fuel shortages."

Texas Army National Guard trucks were escorted by police to directly provide motorists with gasoline. The state was also working to get more than 200,000 gallons of gas to fuel-starved stations in the Houston area.

By late Thursday night, the traffic was at least moving slowly, but was still backed up for about 100 miles in what White called "one of the largest mass evacuations in American history."

And this is an evacuation for a storm that comes closely on the heels on another one; a storm that NO ONE has underestimated from the time forecasts had it hitting Florida and going into the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, unlike my friends on the right, who refuse to find anything wrong with what Republicans do, I'm not going to blame Republicans for this traffic jam; for the inability to provide enough fuel for this mandatory evacuation that's been declared.

But what this does point out is the utter futility of this notion that we can somehow evacuate a major metropolitan area in the face of an ANTICIPATED disaster, let alone an unanticipated one such as a chemical or nuclear attack. The logistics just aren't there. It's like trying to force an elephant through a garden hose. Them's the facts, and all the Republican holier-than-thou crowing about buses can't change that.

It's time for Americans to face the fact that we are sitting ducks, just as most people who live in the world are sitting ducks -- sitting ducks for tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons -- and that's just the natural disasters.

This Administration has asked us to give up essential freedoms -- the freedom to read what we want; the freedom to say what we believe; the freedom to travel; the freedom to have integrity in our own homes without fear of unwarranted government searches -- so that it can "keep us safe."

Well, they can't keep us safe -- and that's the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about.

When I was growning up during the Cold War, all of America's anxieties were focused on one thing: The Russian Nuclear Bomb. As far as wel know, that was the only threat we faced, and if we could somehow stave off The Bomb, we'd be fine. But the worldview which worked in 1960 doesn't work now. The idea that we can bomb our way out of risk just doesn't hold water. There are some who would tell us to just nuke the Middle East until it's nothing but glass made from melted sand. What these people, who drive a Ford Excursion half a mile to pick up their morning donut and coffee, forget is that if you nuke the Middle East, they can't drive that behemoth anymore.

The single biggest thing we can do to "make ourselves safer" is to end our dependency on Middle Eastern energy; to stop the necessity of sucking up to the House of Saud and other unsavory types because we need what they have. We are like addicted prostitutes who put up with being beaten by their dealers because they need what the dealers offer.

And no, the answer isn't more drilling in Alaska and in the Gulf of Mexico; the answer is in science -- you know, that concept that's so frightening to the Bible-thumpers. But we need a New Deal-style government-funded research push to develop renewable sources of energy, and we need it NOW. It may be too late to arrest the global warming that more scientists every day say is the cause of these more intense hurricanes, but at least we can keep the situation from getting worse.

And as for "keeping you safe", well, you always knew that ultimately you're on your own anyway, right?

UPDATE: So much for lifesaving buses when you use oxygen tanks:

A bus filled with 45 elderly Hurricane Rita evacuees from the Houston area caught fire early Friday on gridlocked Interstate 45, leaving at least 24 dead, according to local officials.

"There were 45 souls on the bus ... at this point we believe we have about half accounted for," Dallas County Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Don Peritz. He said early indications were that a mechanical problem caused the blaze and that passengers' oxygen tanks caught fire.

Separately, the Dallas County Fire Marshal's office told NBC News that 24 were killed in the tragedy.

Engulfed
The bus was engulfed with flames, causing a 17-mile backup on a freeway that was already heavily congested with evacuees from the Gulf Coast.

“It burst into flames with black smoke coming from the bus, and then we saw the fire,” witness Ashley Donald told Houston television station KTRK.

The Dallas television station, citing the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, said the bus was carrying senior citizens from Bellaire, a southwest Houston enclave.

By early Friday morning, the bus was reduced to a blackened, burned-out shell, surrounded by numerous police cars and ambulances.

jeudi 22 septembre 2005

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States

You know, I heard about this on Morning Sedition today and I thought it was just Maron being snarky.

But ShakesSis points us to confirmation that it's true. Jeb Bush, the likely 44th President, has a little friend that might upset the Christofascist Zombie Brigade:

After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend.

Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.

''I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.''

Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.

''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared.

The crowd, however, could be excused for not understanding Bush's enigmatic foray into the realm of Eastern mysticism.

We're here to help.

In a 1989 Washington Post article on the politics of tennis, former President George Bush was quoted as threatening to ''unleash Chang'' as a means of intimidating other players.

The saying was apparently quite popular with Gov. Bush's father, and referred to a legendary warrior named Chang who was called upon to settle political disputes in Chinese dynasties of yore.

The phrase has evolved, under Gov. Jeb Bush's use, to mean the need to fix conflicts or disagreements over an issue. Faced with a stalemate, the governor apparently "unleashes Chang" as a rhetorical device, signaling it's time to stop arguing and start agreeing.

No word on if Rubio will unleash Chang, or the sword, as he faces squabbles in the future.

No word either on the obvious phallic implications of Jebbie's little friend, and what it means now that he's given it away.

There's actually something kind of refreshing about this kind of penis size anxiety being displayed for all the world to see. Jebbie's brother has to start wars to deal with his.

Post 23... what do you see?

Saffron tagged me for this latest meme variant.The instructions:1. Delve into your blog archive.2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.5. Tag five people to do the same.My 23rd post was Welcome to Tokyo, as I babbled giddily about my first impressions of Nihon.The fifth sentence

Post 23... what do you see?

Grab Your Diary, 22-30 Sept

So have you got your killer sandwich idea ready for the weekend? That's right. This Saturday is the first inaugural Sydney Sandwich Social.THURSDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2005Blog Party #2: The Tiki EditionGet your beach party and laua-style nibbles and cocktails over to this month's host Dispensing Happiness.FRIDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2005Does My Blog Look Good in This? #9Send your favourite August food photo to

Grab Your Diary, 22-30 Sept

Now we know for sure that Peggy Noonan isn't writing for Bush

Say what you will about the Noonan hyperbole, no one ever accused her of repetitiveness. Her speeches tend to be full of Morning in America hyperbole,but she does know how to make a phrase resonate.

"We will do what it takes" is not that phrase, but that's the one that Sidney Blumenthal notes shows up again again and again in Bush's comments on dealing with anything:

Even the words are the same. On Iraq, President Bush declared on Feb. 4, 2004, "We will do what it takes. We will not leave until the job is done." On post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, on Sept. 15, he eerily echoed, "We will do what it takes. We will stay as long as it takes." It was reassuring for the nation to be told by the president in his televised address that he intends to "stay" in the United States and not cut and run. Perhaps a White House speechwriter hit the copy-and-paste function on his computer or the word "stay" simply popped into the president's mind as he contemplated the crisis, straying into improvisation.

The jarring reverberation of repetitive rhetoric suggested a presidency on a feedback loop. Analogies, of course, are imperfect. Bush's speech, which junked the whole of conservative ideology and channeled the spirit of Lyndon Johnson, might be taken as evidence that his frequent trips to New Orleans have worked some voodoo on him. But there are enough elements in common between the catastrophes in Iraq and New Orleans to be able to grasp the underlying similarities in the Bush approach from Gulf to shining Gulf.

Just as the Iraq war was predicated on the distortion, falsification and suppression of intelligence, so was the administration's preparation for Katrina marked by the refusal to register information contrary to its prefabricated beliefs. Bush's censoring and dismissal of science on global warming helped lull him about the growing severity of hurricanes as a consequence. It was a possibility he did not want to know because it ran contrary to his dogmas. But his passivity extended to the eve of Katrina's landfall, when Max Mayfield, the director of the National Hurricane Center, briefed him by teleconference video about the likelihood that the raging storm would breach the levees of New Orleans. Under Bush, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been reorganized from a professionally proficient operation into a political dumping ground, and since 2001 FEMA had been studiously ignoring precise warnings of a potentially disastrous hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Bush refused to listen to senior military commanders that the light force poised for attack would be insufficient to secure the country under occupation. Then Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki's Senate testimony on the dangers of the Bush planning earned him a publicly humiliating rebuke from then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (since rewarded by elevation to the presidency of the World Bank).

If we hadn't spend $300 billion on Iraq, we'd have money to rebuild Texas too

And Goddess is going to wreak some serious whup-ass on Texas though Her emissary, Hurricane Rita:

The latest runs of two key computer models, the GFS and GFDL, now indicate that the trough of low pressure that was expected to pick up Rita and pull her rapidly northward through Texas will not be strong enough to do so. Instead, these models forecast that Rita will make landfall near Galveston, penetrate inland between 50 and 200 miles, then slowly drift southwestward for nearly two days, as a high pressure ridge will build in to her north. Finally, a second trough is forecast to lift Rita out of Texas on Tuesday. If this scenario develops, not only will the coast receive catastrophic damage from the storm surge, but interior Texas, including the Dallas/Fort Worth area, might see a deluge of 15 - 30 inches of rain. A huge portion of Texas would be a disaster area. We'll have to wait for the next set of model runs due out by tomorrow morning to know better.

The 7:09 pm eye report from the hurricane hunters found a 897 mb pressure and flight level winds of 161 knots (186 mph). This pressure makes Rita the 3rd strongest Atlantic hurricane of all time. Tonight, Rita will be passing over the Loop Current, a warm eddy of water in the Gulf that aided Katrina's growth to a Category 5 hurricane. Fueled by this pool of deep warm water and an almost ideal upper level wind environment, Rita should continue to intensify until Thursday morning, when she will pass beyond the Loop Current. The eye has shrunk to 20 nm diameter from 25 nm earlier this afternoon. By the time the eye shrinks down to 10 nm, the eyewall will collapse and an eyewall replacement cycle begin, putting an end to this intensification cycle. With potentially another 12 hours to go before this happens, Rita could challenge Gilbert's 888 mb pressure record.

You'd better put gas in the car today or tomorrow, folks, because after this baby hits, all bets are off.

You've got to feel for the people of Louisiana....of the hurricane-affected states, THEY are the ones with the governor Not of George W. Bush's Party, and they will be punished for it, as resources that might have gone there end up in Bush's home state instead.

AP has sworn off the Kool-Aid

...at least for now.

Six months ago you NEVER would have seen a headline like this from ANYONE in the MSM:

Bush's Words on Iraq Echo LBJ in 1967

Bush officials bristle at the suggestion the war in Iraq might look anything like Vietnam. Yet just as today's anti-war protests recall memories of yesteryear, President Bush's own words echo those of President Johnson in 1967, a pivotal year for the U.S. in Vietnam.

"America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated," Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967. Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, "We shall stay the course."

After 14 Marines died in a roadside bombing on Aug. 3, Bush declared: "We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq. And the job is this: We'll help the Iraqis develop a democracy."

The two wars were waged quite differently even though they shared similar aims.

About 500,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam in 1967 after a three-year buildup, compared with about 140,000 in Iraq today. Heavy aerial bombing was a primary U.S. strategy in Vietnam while Iraq, after the initial campaign of "shock and awe," has been mainly a ground war. The U.S. negotiated for peace in Vietnam, but there is no single entity with which to negotiate in Iraq.

"The differences are so notable that it would take too long to list them," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld remarked recently.

Knowing the long, painful and divisive Vietnam War ended with an unceremonious U.S. withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam, administration officials have blanched at comparisons with Iraq. The administration declined to comment on comparisons between the rhetoric of Johnson and Bush.

Johnson's main arguments were much like those Bush has employed: War was justified to protect the U.S. and to encourage freedom everywhere. When faced with mounting losses on the battlefield, both presidents offered the dead as a reason to keep fighting.

"When a war is long-lived and the outcome is not demonstrably positive, the lines of argument available to a president are seriously constrained," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "Democrat or Republican, 1960s or early part of the 21st century, you're going to hear a common rhetoric."

South Vietnam, politically unstable because of internal violence and corruption, stumbled toward elections to adopt a constitution and to select officials — not unlike the process Iraq is undergoing.

"Our nation was not born easily. There were times in those years of the 18th century when it seemed as if we might not be born at all," Johnson said in a speech on Aug. 16, 1967.

"Given that background, we ought not to be astonished that this struggle in Vietnam continues," Johnson said. "We ought not to be astonished that that nation, wracked by a war of insurgency and beset by its neighbors to the north, has not already emerged, full-blown, as a perfect model of two-party democracy."

Bush, too, has compared Iraq's difficulties in determining its political future to postcolonial America's.

But of course, when you're as incurious and ignorant of history as George W. Bush is, and when you're as consistently plastered as he was in 1967, you wouldn't even be aware that you're channelling LBJ.

There is one difference, though, aside from party. LBJ also signed the Civil Rights Act, despite knowing that it meant the end of the Democratic Party in the south -- because it was the right thing to do. Vietnam was folly, but on domestic policy, he may have been one of our greatest presidents...and in 1967, the frame of reference was WWII. A president of LBJ's age would understandably frame the idea of American infallibility in war against that reference. A president today has Vietnam as a frame of reference -- and ought to know better. As for domestic policy, well, take a look around you -- nothing but debt as far as the eye can see; a diminishing middle-class, a shrinking base of decent-paying jobs, an environment in shambles, and a nation polarized to an unprecedented degree since the Civil War.

If I'd been on that plane, and the pilot had wanted a blowjob at home plate at Yankee Stadium, I'd be on the D train

Like many people, I spent a ridiculous amount of time last night doing the equivalent of watching paint dry, as various and sundry pilots discussed the landing plan for JetBlue flight #292 (at least until the rip-roaring season premiere of Lost came on). The suspence was enthralling -- and appalling -- and for all that the pilots all seemed to indicate that this was not a particularly dangerous situation, it seemed to me that 2000 gallons of fuel AFTER burning most of it off + sparks = Get Your Ass Out Of There Quick.

But the pilot of JetBlue 292 put that puppy down on the rear landing gear softly like a kitten, then just barely touched the front gear down. It was a truly amazing sight, but what was more amazing was watching calm people debark the plane as if everything had gone according to plan. I'd have been a raving lunatic for 2-1/2 hours.

As for that pilot, as well as the passengers? Well, folks, your fifteen minutes has now begun.

mercredi 21 septembre 2005

Rumors

Is the Administration falling apart? The rumor mill is working overtime. If either of these are true, we are in for some rocky times, especially if Hurricane Rita destroys what's left of the Gulf of Mexico oil infrastructure and causes another few hundred billion dollars in damage, as looks increasingly likely.

1) Rumor #1: Bush hitting the bottle again
Yes, it's the National Enquirer, but as Steve Gilliard points out, when was the last time the Enquirer had to pay out in a libel suit?

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

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

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

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

"When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot," said one insider. "He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: "Stop George!"

[snip]

Bush is under the worst pressure of his two terms in office and his popularity is near an all-time low. The handling of the Katrina crisis and troop losses in Iraq have fueled public discontent and pushed Bush back to drink.

A Washington source said: "The sad fact is that he has been sneaking drinks for weeks now. Laura may have only just caught him — but the word is his drinking has been going on for a while in the capital. He's been in a pressure cooker for months.

"The war in Iraq, the loss of American lives, has deeply affected him. He takes every soldier's life personally. It has left him emotionally drained.

The result is he's taking drinks here and there, likely in private, to cope. "And now with the worst domestic crisis in his administration over Katrina, you pray his drinking doesn't go out of control."

Another source said: "I'm only surprised to hear that he hadn't taken a shot sooner. Before Katrina, he was at his wit's end. I've known him for years. He's been a good ol' Texas boy forever. George had a drinking problem for years that most professionals would say needed therapy. He doesn't believe in it [therapy], he never got it. He drank his way through his youth, through college and well into his thirties. Everyone's drinking around him."

Another source said: "A family member told me they fear George is 'falling apart.' The First Lady has been assigned the job of gatekeeper."

I hope for everyone's sake that one isn't true, because if it is, we are in serious trouble. George, if you're reading this, write in the comments and tell me why you have nothing better to do. But seriously...if this is true, this guy had better get some help and FAST. He may not believe in therapy, but let's face it: he's under more stress than he's ever had in his life, and he's a dry drunk. What he does with his own life is his business, except when it affects the rest of us, which a president on a bender certainly does.

2) A falling-out between Bush and Cheney, with Cheney trying to distance himself from a failing president:

Is it possible that the President and the Vice President have fallen out? I mean, I’m just asking. But if you remember September 11, 2001 -- and I’m sure you do -- the President had no idea what to do, but the Vice President did. The Vice President took over. He didn’t even consult with the President. He put the President on Air Force One and the President spent the day flying from one airport to another, which was something that even the President eventually understood made him look as if he wasn’t in charge.

New Orleans is completely screwed now

...because the Bush Administration has a nice shiny NEW hurricane about to hit not just a RED state, but the oil capital of America, and the Preznit's home state to boot. And you can betcher life that no sirreee, they ain't gonna drop the ball on this one:

Authorities in Texas and Louisiana today are working to get thousands of residents out of the path of Hurricane Rita as the powerful, Category 4 storm picks up strength in the Gulf of Mexico. The military also is redeploying troops and ships in the area -- including many that were helping with Hurricane Katrina recovery -- out of Rita's path and into position to respond quickly.

So if the people of New Orleans had any thought that they might be able to go back home ever again and reclaim what little might have survived Katrina, fuhgeddaboudit. The Bushistas have bigger fish to fry in states that reliably vote for them.

As a side note, VOLUNTARY evacuations have been ordered from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Hmmmmm....I wonder if he'll take any heat for those who don't leave.

And Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco is taking no chances. She's asked C-Plus Nero to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana. I wonder if she'll get it.

Oy.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters, Weather Underground:

The 1:53 eye report from the hurricane hunters found a 920 mb pressure and flight level winds of 153 knots (176 mph). These numbers plus the satellite intensity estimates would ordinarily support upgrading Rita to a Category 5 hurricane, but NHC is being conservative, and calling Rita a strong Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph surface winds.

There are two hurricane hunter aircraft in Rita this afternoon. The NOAA hurricane hunters found a central pressure of 934 mb at 11:17 am, and the Air Force hurricane hunters found a central pressure of 923 mb at 1:02pm. This incredible drop of 11 mb in 105 minutes is the fastest pressure fall I can ever recall seeing in a hurricane, and exceeds the 10 mb drop in 100 minutes we saw in Hurricane Charley last year. With an eye diameter of 25 miles, an eyewall replacement cycle is not likely today, and Rita may intensify to a level close to Katrina's strongest point--902 mb.

I hate to tell Pat Robertson and the other members of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade this, but it's starting to look like God doesn't give a rats ass about gays or abortion clinics, but he's sure telling us we have to rethink our dependence on oil.

While Rush and Hannity and O'Reilly were pointing fingers at Kathleen Blanco...

...ANYTHING to point blame away from their Chosen Messiah, George W. C-Plus Nero Bush, one of their compatriots in PROGRESSIVE talk radio, was actually doing something for families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

Hoffmania has this story, which makes me proud to be a liberal:

Ed Schultz, a radio talk show host from Fargo, N.D., and self-proclaimed "America's No. 1 progressive talker" who is carried on radio stations from Los Angeles to Boston, watched from his comfortable lakefront home as thousands struggled to survive in New Orleans.

"We're out water-skiing and enjoying the world…. I said, 'We've got to find some of these families and bring them to Fargo,' " he recalled.

Schultz decided to charter the jet he uses about once a month for his radio show on KFGO-AM (790). It costs about $10,000 a pop, but it's worth it when he and the crew don't feel like driving to appearances in Ann Arbor, Mich., or Sioux Falls, S.D., or don't want to hassle with the delays of commercial flying.

Schultz isn't a high roller — "he's not Oprah," his producer points out — but he does have loyal listeners, and he knows how to get things done. So when it appeared to him that the federal government had dropped the ball, Schultz launched the Adopt a Family of Hurricane Katrina Trust Fund. Then he and his wife, Wendy, hooked up with the Air National Guard 119th Fighter Wing out of Fargo and went down to the Gulf Coast.

Hours later, he called his pilot, Toby McPherson, and said: "Toby, get that jet fired up and come on over and pick me up. We've got to bring home some families."

More animal rescue efforts

I can't help but wonder, with Texas animal shelters full of companion animals rescued from Hurricane Katrina, what's going to happen with Texas about to be clobbered by its own storm.

For those interested in the ongoing efforts in the eastern Gulf coast, check out Eric's Dog Blog. Eric Rice is down in Gulfport, Mississippi, helping out the Humane Society and trying to raise funds.

Heartwarming Hurricane Animal Story for Wednesday, 9/21/05

Here at B@B, we take seriously our responsibility to bring you the latest in warm 'n' cuddly animal stories from this season's horrifying hurricane season.

Some of you may have seen news segments on the eight trained bottlenose dolphins that were washed into Mississippi Sound after their aquarium tank was broken during Hurricane Katrina.

Well, some good news: The last four have been rescued:

The NOAA Fisheries Service and the Marine Life Aquarium of Gulfport, Miss., working with a number of other partners, rescued the last four of the eight trained bottlenose dolphins that were swept out of an aquarium tank torn apart by the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. Normally held in captivity, the dolphins don't have the necessary skills to survive on their own. They have survived various injuries and predators and have stayed together since the storm.

On September 10, the team of NOAA marine mammal biologists and aquarium trainers first located the eight dolphins and began providing food and medicine to the animals. Over the course of a week, the team was able to capture four of the weakest dolphins, and has been feeding the others several times a day as they planned and performed the multi-stage rescue. The remaining four dolphins vanished over the weekend. Through reports from the Coast Guard, NOAA Fisheries Service scientists found the dolphins Tuesday morning while doing surveys in a NOAA boat near Biloxi, Miss.

Due to the unclean condition of the water and the difficulty of the rescue, biologists captured the dolphins in stages. The animals were transported to nearby salt-water pools, provided by the U.S. Navy, where they will receive medical care and be evaluated for diseases, including contagious diseases. NOAA Fisheries Service lead veterinarian Dr. Teri Rowles said the dolphins will be kept in quarantine while scientists access their overall health.

"We're pleased we were able to rescue all eight dolphins," said Rowles. "They are now in a situation where full diagnostics can be done and medical care can be provided. The rescue team remains cautiously optimistic that they will recover from this ordeal."

Nice work from the U.S. Navy, the Air National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Gulf World Marine Park, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Dolphins are arguably the only species smarter than we are, and they deserve the effort that went into this rescue.

MoDo on Administration hackery

A service for those of you without TimesSelect:

The president won't be happy until he dons a yellow slicker and actually takes the place of Anderson Cooper, violently blown about by Rita as he talks into a camera lens lashed with water, hanging onto a mailbox as he's hit by a flying pig in a squall, sucked up by a waterspout in the eye of the storm over the Dry Tortugas.

Then maybe he'll go back to the White House and do his job instead of running down to the Gulf Coast for silly disaster-ops every other day.

There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth sodden pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he had spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."

[snip]

Mr. Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.

The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the F.D.A.'s Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the F.D.A. may have already reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.

Mr. Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.

Ms. Myers's main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Mr. Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.

Imagine living in such a bubble that it takes you five in-person trips to a disaster area to begin comprehending the magnitude of the damage.

He could have just watched Keith Olbermann every night for an hour, and still gone to dreamland at his customary time of 9:00 PM.

If this is what they do to American soldiers, imagine what they'll do with Katrina survivors

KBR, a division of -- you guessed it -- Halliburton, (whose profits have doubled in the last year on OUR tax dollars), has been further lining its pockets by serving spoiled food and providing contaiminated water to American troops:

Outrage overflowed on Capitol Hill this summer when members of Congress learned that Halliburton's dining halls in Iraq had repeatedly served spoiled food to unsuspecting troops. "This happened quite a bit," testified Rory Mayberry, a former food manager with Halliburton's KBR subsidiary.

But the outrage apparently doesn't end with spoiled food. Former KBR employees and water quality specialists, Ben Carter and Ken May, told HalliburtonWatch that KBR knowingly exposes troops and civilians to contaminated water from Iraq's Euphrates River. One internal KBR email provided to HalliburtonWatch says that, for "possibly a year," the level of contamination at one camp was two times the normal level for untreated water.

"I discovered the water being delivered from the Euphrates for the military was not being treated properly and thousands were being exposed daily to numerous pathogenic organisms," Carter informed HalliburtonWatch.

Carter worked at Camp Ar Ramadi, located 70 miles west of Baghdad in the notoriously violent Sunni Triangle, but he says water contamination problems exist throughout Iraq's military camps. He helped manage KBR's Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU), which is a water treatment system designed to produce potable (drinkable) water from a variety of raw water sources such as lakes, lagoons and rivers. ROWPU is supposed to provide the troops with clean water from Iraq's Euphrates River.

William Granger of KBR Water Quality for Iraq reached this conclusion in an email after investigating Carter's complaint: "Fact: We exposed a base camp population (military and civilian) to a water source that was not treated. The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River." Granger admitted that the contamination was "most likely … ongoing through the entire life" of the camp, but that he was "not sure if any attempt to notify the exposed population was ever made."

In a company email last March to his superior, Harold "Mo" Orr, coordinator for Halliburton's health and safety department said, "We have determined that the military (Command Surgeon) has not given any kind of signoff on the military ROWPU (As required by the military SOP) nor has KBR ever inquired about this before. This was only discovered thru the investigation of possible contamination by Ben Carter who is right now in charge of the ROWPU."

Orr's request for further investigation into the matter was overruled by KBR's health, safety and environmental manager, Jay Delahoussaye, who said in an email that the initial health hazard turned out to be "erroneous" and that "corrective measures" were taken and "No KBR personnel were exposed to contaminated water."

But Granger responded with another email, saying it was unclear whether corrective action had been taken. He said it was "highly likely" that someone from KBR finally started chlorinating the water this year, but that "there is no documentation" to confirm it. Nor is there documentation to show KBR is testing the water three times per day as required by the military, Granger said.

Nonetheless, Carter said chlorination is not enough to remedy the problem since raw sewage is routinely dumped less than two miles from the water intake location, in violation of military policy and procedure. "Chlorination of water tanks, while certainly beneficial, is not sufficient protection from parasitic exposure," Carter said in an email to Granger, who is still employed with KBR.

According to Carter, Granger had written a scathing, 21-page report to KBR management about water quality at Ar Ramadi. Carter says the report proves the company's "incompetence and willful negligence" in protecting the water supply.

Here's what KBR has been hired to do for the Katrina recovery:

Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. in Arlington, VA received $15 million for Task Order 0020 under its $500 million maximum "emergency response" contract with the US government. DID covered the particulars of that contract on Monday; they set out a number of specifications that leave just a handful of global firms able to meet them.

Task Order 0020 is a cost reimbursement, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity construction capabilities contract for post-Katrina recovery efforts in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for "unwatering activities" in Plaquemines, East and West basins, New Orleans, LA.

The work to be performed provides for immediate disaster recovery response to repair pumps (many of which were poorly designed for the conditions they faced) and restore utilities to efficiently and rapidly remove water from these areas. Work will be performed in New Orleans, LA, and is expected to be complete by November 2005.

Would YOU bet your house on levee repairs done by Kellogg, Brown, and Root -- a company that would line its pockets by feeding soldiers bad food? I wouldn't.

The road through Jack Abramoff leads directly to the White House

Abramoff isn't just cozy with Tom DeLay:

The Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal reached into the White House yesterday, picking off President Bush's top procurement official -- who just barely had time to resign before being arrested.

The federal charges against David Safavian stem from his tenure as chief of staff of the General Services Administration, predating his arrival at the White House a year ago. But his arrest nonetheless draws renewed attention to the ongoing corruption and influence-peddling inquiry swirling around Abramoff, a lobbyist well known for his connections to conservative Republicans in the White House and Congress.

And for a White House so desperate to build public confidence in its ability to respond to the Gulf Coast disaster, it doesn't exactly help that the man who up until Friday was overseeing contracting policy for the multi-billion dollar relief effort has now been charged with lying and obstructing a criminal investigation.

R. Jeffrey Smith and Susan Schmidt write in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

"The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002."

Philip Shenon and Anne E. Kornblut write in the New York Times: "The White House said in a statement that Mr. Safavian had resigned on Friday and that 'we, of course, will cooperate fully with the Justice Department in this investigation.' A spokesman said the White House would have no further comment on the arrest. . . .

"His wife, Jennifer Safavian, is chief counsel for oversight and investigations on the House Government Reform Committee, which is responsible for overseeing government procurement and is, among other things, expected to conduct the Congressional investigation into missteps after Hurricane Katrina."

Shenon and Kornblut note: "The Justice Department did not reveal details of Mr. Safavian's arrest, including where it occurred. The department also did not say why the criminal charges were brought directly by prosecutors, rather than by the Washington grand jury investigating Mr. Abramoff. The Justice Department often bypasses a grand jury when a criminal case is brought together hurriedly or when there is fear that a defendant may try to flee."

Just recently, Safavian was the administration's point man when it came to one of the controversial measures in the White House's recent $51.8 billion supplemental aid request: The boosting from $15,000 to $250,000 of the upper limit for purchases made with government-issued credit cards. Critics said the change will allow card holders to circumvent important measures to curb fraud and cronyism.

[snip]

In addition to Safavian, Abramoff is known to have close ties to at least one other key White House official: Susan B. Ralston, Karl Rove's omnipresent assistant and gatekeeper.

Here's Peter H. Stone writing in the National Journal last year: "As presidential adviser Karl Rove set up shop in the West Wing in 2001, he was looking for an assistant to serve as the trusted gatekeeper of his new fiefdom. Superlobbyist and Republican fundraiser Jack Abramoff was happy to lend a hand. Abramoff knew just the right person for the job: his own assistant, Susan Ralston. She interviewed with Rove and got the position."

Ralston told Filipinas magazine last year: "Working for Karl Rove is like being at the center of the Bush universe -- I am fortunate to be where I am, and be involved in much of what goes on at the White House."

Martha Stewart went to jail for this

But I'm quite certain that the IOKIYAR rule is going to apply for a potential Republican presidential candidate doing THE EXACT SAME THING:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family's hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.

Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn., the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.

Frist's shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares, and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.

HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts' expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.

The value of Frist's stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.

Blind trusts are used to avoid conflicts of interest. Assets are turned over to a trustee who manages them without divulging any purchases or sales and reports only the total value and income earned to the owner.

To keep the trust blind, Frist was not allowed to know how much HCA stock he owned, Call said, but he was allowed to ask for all of it to be sold.

Frist, a surgeon first elected to the Senate in 1994, had been criticized for maintaining the holdings while dealing with legislation affecting the medical industry and managed care. Call said the Senate Ethics Committee has found nothing wrong with Frist's holdings in the company in a blind trust.

"To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest Senator Frist went beyond what ethics requires and sold the stock," Call said. Asked why he had never done so before, she said, "I don't know that he's been worried about it in the past."

An HCA spokesman said the company had no part in Frist's decision.

And I am Marie of Rumania.

This is a FAMILY business, and we're supposed to believe that NO ONE IN THE FAMILY called him and told him to sell? Bullshit.

Unless it's because he wants to run for president and THIS is what his family business does:

The federal searches of Columbia facilities began in March. Agents were looking for evidence of suspected fraud against Medicare, Medicaid, and the military healthcare system. Three mid-level Columbia managers were indicted in Fort Meyers, Fla., this summer for conspiring to inflate the amount of reimbursement Columbia’s Fawcett Memorial Hospital in Port Charlotte, Florida, was to receive from Medicare and the military healthcare program.

Federal investigators continue to examine several other Columbia billing practices. Both the Department of Justice and Columbia refused to talk about the on-going investigations. But the Wall Street Journal has reported some of the things Columbia is being investigated for are ordering costly blood tests, receiving reimbursement from the federal government for advertising and marketing expenses, and billing separately for costs that are usually consolidated.

Other concerns have been raised as well. During a hearing in Fort Meyers, assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Haley said company officials may have tried to destroy evidence relevant to the government’s investigation. "According to Ms. Haley, law-enforcement officials first became aware of a possible attempt to destroy evidence when, soon after Columbia businesses in El Paso were searched in March, a local citizen alerted law-enforcement officials to a ‘cache of Columbia documents in a garbage dumpster at a gas station several miles’ from the nearest Columbia facility," the Journal reported Aug. 14. Columbia spokesperson Jeff Prescott refused to comment on the report.

Thomas Frist Jr., MD, the vice chair of Columbia’s board, and other board members rallied for Scott’s resignation after 35 warrants were obtained to search facilities in seven states in July. On July 25 he received the resignation. Frist, who co-founded Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) with his physician father in 1968, stepped in as chairperson and CEO.

Since then, Columbia has reportedly developed an "action plan" to sell its $1.2 billion Dallas-based home healthcare unit and to restructure its relationships with physicians. Columbia’s ties with physicians—such as the practice of offering to sell them financial stakes in hospitals—has been a hallmark of its business since the early days in El Paso. But now Columbia has reportedly decided to discontinue those sales and will establish tighter guidelines on physician transactions. Columbia executives stress that the creation of the action plan does not imply they found any wrongdoing or errors in their policies and procedures.

I'll be waiting to see if they cart Frist off to jail for insider trading. Somehow I think it's not going to happen.

mardi 20 septembre 2005

"She'll probably conclude there was no hurricane"

I remember when Jack Cafferty was a curmudgeonly Bush apologist. But like Brian Williams, he's had just about enough of the fool that's running the country, and lately he's been on fire. Here he is, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, weighing on in C-Plus Nero's selection of his own homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate the Hurricane Katrina screwups:

Newsweek magazine reported last week that when Katrina struck, no one wanted to tell the president the truth about what happened. None of his advisers wanted to bring him the bad news. What kind of staff is that? Nobody wanted to tell the president of the US that the nation's 35th largest city had been destroyed. Who are these people? And what kind of government do we have when everyone is afraid to tell the president anything he doesn't want to hear?

[snip]

The public's not going to buy any of this stuff that comes out of Washington. They're not going to believe anything that comes out of these partisan reports, or stuff that was done from within the White House. It just isn't going to wash. The game is up with John Q. Public. They're not buying this stuff anymore.

And that's the question that should scare everyone: What kind of government do we have when everyone is afraid to tell the President anything he doesn't want to hear? Where is it written that he's entitled to live in some delusional fantasy world, when the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake? And why on earth does anyone think this is acceptable?

What you're not seeing on the evening news

From a diary at Daily Kos by someone who's in Slidell, Louisiana:

In the past couple of days I have been to Slidel, which was the worse thing I've seen in my life. You cannot tell that houses were ever in areas...there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING. The storm surge off of the lake went to 40 feet apparently and seeing the piles of debris, I would say that was about right.

The stench is really something all around here, at least to me. It is over 100 degrees with the same humidity, these towns smell horrific...fear, death, dying, mold, and very much like chemicals.

I've noticed my skin is looking bad and there are some 'bites/sores' I can't quite figure out.

The suffering is relentless, the aid from the government agencies and the 'help' agencies are all lacking hugely. FEMA claims their hands are tied by Washington....who knows.

I'm on the ground, seeing human suffering and squallor conditions in AMERICA and I keep reminding myself I am NOT supposed to be living in a THIRD WORLD COUNTRY...when I see this for miles and miles and listen to the stories, I believe that this part of AMERICA is THIRD WORLD.

Imagine having 20 feet of water go through your home and returning to have it still with 3-9 feet of water, then having to RIP EVERYTHING out and stack in in the streets for FEMA/insurance to look at...then having to rip out the carpets and the drywall because MOLD is growing everywhere at an alarming rate...then think about HAVING TO LIVE IN THAT HOME because unless you leave the state, there is NO place to go. Then look for bleach, or ANY FUCKING cleaning supplies to try and make your 'home' 'safe'...and there is NOTHING being handed out and the mold grows back as quickly as you clean it off.

Did I tell you this is in AMERICA? Slidel to be exact.

Think of those riding out the storm in a church and going higher and higher and finally the water begins to receed...when it drains out, you still have no place else to go, because your housing is gone, so you stay in the molding and dank church...you've been forgotten, no food, water...STILL.

Did I tell you this is in AMERICA? Slidel to be exact.

These are stories I will tell later when I get back to California and prepare them. Today (Tuesday) I head back to Slidel to take a load of supplies to 'my' new friends and check on the church and will go buy things if necessary.

Today I hope to continue to take video, pictures and record stories from the survivors and the refugees.

Oh, yes, they are refugees, the ones with no place to go and nothing but the clothes on their back...in fact they say they are the 'forgotten refugees of America'....

AMERICA .... The failing to help our CITIZENS.

I do believe that if it weren't for the individuals and grassroots that are all over this hurricane ravaged area, there would be worse death tolls, as I believe we have saved many.

These are the people Barbara Bush thinks are so much better off now. And these are the people who will be forgotten all too soon, and left by their government to fend for themselves in a meaner, crueler, more selfish America.

Our friend and ally, Pervez Musharraf

If the Bush Administration thinks a veterinarian is qualified to head up women's health issues at the FDA, why not think an ally who thinks women are lining up to get raped to make money is equally OK?

Kristof, behind the Times Select wall (I'm a print subscriber on weekends, so they're not charging me extra for it):

Our close ally President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan visited the U.S. last week and fretted aloud about a surprising problem: The "easiest way" for Pakistani women to make money is to get raped, he said, so they're lining up to be raped and thus making him look bad.

That's right. He's nuts.

"You must understand the environment in Pakistan," The Washington Post quoted him as saying. "This has become a moneymaking concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped."

That comment got Mr. Musharraf in hot water. So over the weekend, Mr. Musharraf denied that he had ever said any such thing - noting that if he had, he would have been "stupid."

True.

The Washington Post reviewed its tapes and reported that it had quoted him correctly. It also added an additional quote from the same interview, in which Mr. Musharraf spoke of rape as an avenue to riches: "It is the easiest way of doing it. Every second person now wants to."

Sexual violence has become a sensitive issue for Mr. Musharraf because of the pioneering work of women like Mukhtaran Bibi, whom a tribal council sentenced to be gang-raped as a way to punish her brother - and who then used her compensation money to start schools and launch a nationwide anti-rape campaign. After I wrote about her last year, Times readers sent her a total of $160,000, which she is using to start an ambulance service, operate schools and campaign for women's rights.

Fearing that Ms. Mukhtaran's anti-rape campaign would make his country look bad, General Musharraf barred her from traveling to the U.S. to attend a conference. When she protested to me and others, the government kidnapped her to keep her from complaining, releasing her only after Condi Rice raised the issue with the Pakistani government.

Then in July and August, I wrote about Dr. Shazia Khalid, a Pakistani physician whom the authorities drugged, put in a mental hospital, threatened to kill and finally exiled to keep her from recounting her rape.

The latest victim to come forward is Sonia Naz, a 23-year-old woman whose husband disappeared. Desperate, she went to the National Assembly building in Islamabad to see if she could get help. Then, she says, the police arrested her and repeatedly stripped her, raped her and beat her.

Embarrassed by these revelations, Mr. Musharraf held a conference in Pakistan this month on women's issues. He wore a necktie with blue and pink, which he said could reflect cooperation between men and women - and then he denounced Dr. Shazia.

Here in New York on Saturday, General Musharraf held a meeting with an invited audience to show himself off as a sensitive man. The meeting started awkwardly when he tried to demonstrate his feminist credentials by saying he opposed violence against women because it's unchivalrous toward the weaker sex. Then, in response to skeptical questions, Mr. Musharraf lost his temper, shouting at audience members and threatening to "get" anyone who exposed Pakistan's problems to the world.

Aaahhh, they musta been askin' for it.

Hypocritical Christofascist, heal thyself

Why on earth would anyone want these people having the power to tell us what to do with our lives:

Folks find Mr. Burgin's accessible personality easy to trust, his counsel easy to revere, his authenticity easy to believe. For 20 years, churchgoers first in Birmingham, Ala., and then Cincinnati, Ohio, trusted, revered, and believed the impeccable reputation Mr. Burgin built from his pulpit. But beneath the thick varnish of smooth oration and doctrinally sound sermons, this conservative pastor secretly harbored a monster. "I was a master of duplicity," he said.

Six years ago, the shadow-dwelling beast got out; Mr. Burgin was addicted to internet pornography. For the entirety of his ministry and even before, Mr. Burgin tumbled silently through a cycle of shame, repentance, and broken vows. Seasons of apparent victory collapsed in times of stress, when the comfort of habit proved too difficult to resist. Despite a guilt-ridden conscience, Mr. Burgin often preached on sexual purity, slogging through such sermons undetected. "I compartmentalized it in my mind," he said. "I rationalized. I minimized. I would stop while preaching and teaching on it."

Mr. Burgin's exposure came during a spell of particularly high internet activity. A series of stress-filled events—his father died, his eldest son left for college, and he relocated to a new church—drove him to new levels of daring. He left undone the practiced ritual of covering his tracks, failing to delete his computer's history and temporary internet files. "I got sloppy, and I got caught," he said.

Mr. Burgin's wife of 25 years did the catching and unlocked the cage of her husband's secret monster by releasing printouts of his activity to various church leaders. She then chose divorce, taking the couple's young daughter with her. His ministry and family lost, his reputation soiled, Mr. Burgin turned to the church for help and found little. "Churches didn't know how to handle me," he said.

A Barna Research Group study released in November 2003 found four out of five born-again Christians believe pornography to be morally unacceptable. The Bible likens lust to adultery and fornication, both expressly forbidden. Nevertheless, Mr. Burgin's disaster is far from unique:

• A 2003 survey from Internet Filter Review reported that 47 percent of Christians admit pornography is a major problem in their homes.

• An internet survey conducted by Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in 2002 found 30 percent of 6,000 pastors had viewed internet porn in the last 30 days.

• A Christianity Today Leadership Survey in 2001 reported 37 percent of pastors have viewed internet porn.

• Family Safe Media reports 53 percent of men belonging to the Christian organization Promise Keepers visit porn sites every week.

• One in seven calls to Focus on the Family's Pastoral Care Hotline is related to internet pornography.

• Today's Christian Woman in 2003 found that one in six women, including Christians, struggles with pornography addiction.

Now, I have no fondness whatsoever for porn, internet or otherwise. But don't you think it's just a tad disingenuous for people like this to go into the pulpit every Sunday, and to Washington daily, asking for laws to keep OTHER people, who DON'T have a problem with addiction to porn (maybe because they aren't fundamentalist Christians) away from it?

Sorry, wingnuts. You're responsible for your own behavior. Just because you can't control yourselves doesn't give you the right to advocate for laws to make the rest of us behave. We're already doing that. Maybe you could learn something from us.

(via Pam)

Pho An Restaurant, Bankstown

I still remember my first time at Pho An.It was about ten years ago. Back then they were in their old premises, and the decor was, well, non-existent. As we sat down at our table, a waiter seemed to materialise from thin air and almost leapt on us with questioning eyes waiting for our order. Brandishing an electronic keypad(which was impressive itself back in those days), he tapped in our orders

Pho An Restaurant, Bankstown

So how's that Iraq war going, anyway?

On Planet Delusional, it's going great, thank you very much:

The Pentagon said on Monday there was reason for optimism in Iraq despite what it called the "tough reality" of a war in which insurgent violence rages unabated and the U.S. military death toll approaches 2,000.

Two-and-a-half years after American-led forces invaded Iraq to oust President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials tout political progress -- saying every important milestone has been achieved including a draft constitution -- and the steady building of Iraqi security forces.

But some defense experts, saying insurgencies like this one can take years to unfold, argued the conflict had become a military stalemate and expressed concern about civil war. They also said an erosion in U.S. public support for the war should be a worrisome development for President George W. Bush.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita urged people not to gauge the war based on the volume of rebel bombings. "That's not a good way to determine how good or bad things are going -- by (counting) how many things are exploding," Di Rita said.

"Nobody's trying to hide from that reality. It's a tough reality," he said. "But it's a tough reality in which, I think, generally the people that are closest to it, the Iraqi political leaders and our commanders, feel (there is) reason for some optimism despite all the violence."

Keep saying it, Larry. Maybe someday it'll be true. But it'll be long after you and your bumbling boss have returned to Crawford.

From their mouths to God's ear

We can only hope that rumors of the demise of the Bush Agenda are not exaggerated. Maybe then we have a chance of emerging in 2008 with something salvageable of our country:

Publicly, the White House will tell you that it intends to push ahead with two of its big legislative issues throughout the fall: making permanent the first term tax cuts and Social Security reform.

Even privately, with the political and policy debacle that the White House created with its Clintonian response to Hurricane Katrina, policy and political types at 1600 Pennsylvania insist what's left of an agenda is still viable.

But at this stage of the game, barring some imaginative political moves that bear some resemblance to the Bush Administration circa 2002, Republicans on Capitol Hill and even some longtime Bush team members in various Cabinet level departments say this Administration is done for.

"You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

Too pessimistic? Maybe not. Rumors are flying through various departments of longtime senior Bush loyalists looking to jump, but with few opportunities in the private sector to make the jump look like anything more than desperation. Almost daily, complaints from Cabinet level Departments come in to the White House about lack of communication coordination on even basic policy matters.

"What happened was that some of the best people who were working in the Administration during the first term, but who weren't necessarily Bush campaign members or weren't particularly close to the White House, jumped when they saw opportunities being filled by under-qualified but more politically connected people," says a current Administration senior staffer in a Cabinet department. "In this department we lost three quarters of the people who should have been encouraged to stay, and most of them left simply because they had received no indication they would be considered for better or different opportunities. And many of these folks would have stayed."

I'm glad I don't live in New York City

Imagine having to choose whether to vote for Michael Bloomberg or Fernando Ferrer. Would you prefer arsenic or zyklon-B?

Republican New York City mayors are perhaps the last of the old Rockefeller Republicans. Guys like Tom Coburn or Roy Blunt or Rick Santorum don't go over in the Big Apple. Instead, the city gets guys like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, who SEEM to be "moderate" when compared with their more lunatic party compatriots.

Bloomberg hasn't done a BAD job, and the bad taste left by Freddy Ferrer's shameless attempt to suck up to cops by claiming that the murder of Amadou Diallo was justified makes me wonder just how craven he's willing to be. I'm just glad I don't have to face this choice.

But chew on this: Cindy Sheehan was allowed to camp in Crawford, Texas. She was allowed to speak in Crawford, Texas -- within sight of President Wingnut's house.

But in New York City, under the "moderate" Michael Bloomberg, she was rather forcefully silenced yesterday:

Cindy Sheehan may be the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. But that didn't stop members of the New York Police Department from marching into the crowd of about 150 people gathered in Union Square Monday to hear her speak and yanking away the microphone.
The NYPD pulled the plug just as Sheehan was calling on the audience not to lose heart in the fight to end the war in Iraq.

"We get up every morning, and every morning we see this enormous mountain in front of us," said Sheehan, speaking on behalf of the other parents and family members of fallen soldiers who have taken up the crusade to bring the troops home.

"We can't go through it, we can't go under it, so we have to go over it," she continued, just as the cops rushed the makeshift podium.

Police dragged away Paul Zulkowitz, a.k.a. Zool, an organizer with “Camp Casey NYC,” the small encampment that he and other activists set up a month ago in Union Square in solidarity with Sheehan’s vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. The New York branch existed much to the ire of the city’s Parks Department. Today, Zulkowitz was arrested for failing to obtain a sound permit—a charge that normally warrants no more than a summons.

Moments earlier, Zulkowitz had been chastising Parks officials for refusing to grant a permit to the encampment, and accusing the police of trying to harass the antiwar protest away. Contrasting the liberal Big Apple with the hostile environs Sheehan faced in Crawford, Zulkowitz told the crowd: "You would think that here in New York City, at Union Square—our Hyde Park—you would think that we would little difficulty having a 24-hour vigil to oppose the war. In fact, we've had two arrests and eight summonses and endless harassment from the police for doing what we do."

As the activists hustled away Sheehan and the other family members on the Bring Them Home Now tour, an enraged crowd of about 50 people stormed after the police, chanting, "Shame! Shame!" Meanwhile Iraq war veteran and now peace activist Jeff Key played "God Bless America" on his trumpet.

"Since when can't you talk out here in Union Square?" demanded an Upper West Side social worker who identified herself as Quha, who said she'd taken her lunch break to hear Sheehan because she has a 20-year-old son who is considering enlisting. "I've seen everyone and their mother come out and speak nonsense out here in this park, and for them to shut down Cindy Sheehan is just not right."

"They came in like gangbusters. It was really ridiculous," said Margaret Rapp, a retired teacher from Inwood who added that she planned to file a complaint after an officer forcibly shoved her in the chest. A mother of a 19-year-old, she said she'd come to hear Sheehan because she lost her fiancee during the Vietnam War. "This is very close to home. There is a chord that Cindy hits among people that have lost people in this war and other wars, or who have draft age children like me. We're scared to death.”

Inspector Michael McEnroy, commander of the 13th Precinct, insisted the shutdown order had nothing to do with the content of Sheehan’s speech, but was instead about the "provocation" caused by Zulkowitz. “This has been going on for much longer than today,” McEnroy said, adding of Sheehan, “I don’t even know the woman.” That last part prompted one pissed-off onlooker to shoot back: “Haven’t you watched the news or read a paper in the last three months? ”

Looks like Bloomberg and Giuliani have a certain fondness for Gestapo-like tactics in common.