aflam: août 2006

jeudi 31 août 2006

Blog Day 2006

It's Blog Day today. Squint a little closer at today's date of 31 08 and you can just about make out the word blog.The premise behind Blog Day is simple. Post about 5 blogs new to you, that you find interesting, and watch the tangled web we call the Internet do its grapevine work. It's all about celebrating the diversity of blogosphere and encouraging blog surfers to continue on to sites new to

Blog Day 2006

This year, can we please remember that George W. Bush did nothing to prevent the 9/11 attacks?

For the last four anniversaries of the 9/11/01 attacks, George W. Bush has taken political advantage of the observances to remind us about his so-called war on terror. Perhaps, now that he is hovering at no more than 35-38% approval, we can observe the anniverssary by noting just how his Administration fell down on the job in the days leading up to the attacks.

Sidney Blumenthal:

Five years later, the Day of Remembrance for Sept. 11 should properly begin on Aug. 6 to recall the Presidential Daily Briefing that Bush received in 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," which he ignored, dismissing his CIA briefer: "Well, you've covered your ass now." Before then, the administration had shunted aside the terrorist issue as something tainted by association with Bill Clinton. Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was ignored and demoted, pushed off the National Security Council Principals Committee. Despite Clarke's urgent entreaties the Principals Committee discussed terrorism only once, deciding at Rumsfeld's behest not to fly Predator drones for surveillance over Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Bush's final dismissal of the threat warning on Aug. 6 meant that the CIA and FBI and other agencies were under no pressure from above to coordinate or even to be on the alert for terrorist plots.

In the aftermath of the derelict approach before 9/11, incompetent bungling has been compounded. By now the history is all too sadly familiar: allowing bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora by failing to commit U.S. troops; draining personnel and resources from Afghanistan in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; contempt for our alliances and disregard of world opinion; and the incredible accumulation of blunders in Iraq that have produced the present and ever-widening crisis, which has restored and sustained prestige for terrorism from Baghdad to London, constantly replenishing a potential reservoir of able and willing terrorists.

Each disaster of Bush's presidency triggers remembrance of another. Bush's neglectful behavior before Katrina recalls his studious indifference to terrorism on the eve of 9/11. His refusal to respond to the briefing by Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, that the levees would likely be breached eerily repeated his administration's dismissive attitude toward Clarke's warnings and the Aug. 6 PDB on bin Laden. From 9/11 to Katrina, the pattern, we can now recall, is remarkably consistent.

Remembrance of Bush's fiascoes does not overshadow the reality that they are not sealed in the past but are continuing catastrophes. As new failures unfold, the old ones appear in their refracted light. Memories of Bush's damage acquire deeper meanings with each new calamity.

Why do Americans continue to put up with this level of incompetence?

No wonder the Christofascist zombies are so obsessed with paternal authority

No wonder they're so terrified of fathers losing their moral authority, when a daddy off at war is so easily replaced -- by a literal cardboard cutout:

Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."

Insert your own couch potato hogging the remote joke here.

Judkins said the cutout has been a comfort since her husband was deployed in January.

``He goes everywhere with me. Every day he comes to work with me," said Judkins, who works in a dentist's office. ``I just bought a new table from the Amish community, and he sits at the head of the table. Yes, he does."

In the car, her husband's image sits behind the driver's seat so Judkins can keep an eye on him. A third-grade class writes to him as their ``adopted" guardsman. And Judkins even brought her husband's cutout -- which she calls Slim Jim, because he's not -- to confession at the local church.

When asked what her husband had to confess, Judkins laughed. ``That's private," she said.

Jim Judkins had at least one precarious moment as a cutout. When cousins tried to stuff him into a suitcase to take on a cruise, they broke his neck. But instead of expensive surgery, all the cutout needed was a little duct tape, Judkins said.

Cindy Branscom of Hallowell, whose husband, Colonel John Branscom, is in Afghanistan, said spouses of service members in the 240th Engineer Group often bring their Flat Daddies to monthly support meetings and group barbecues. She said one spouse, Mary Holbrook of Hermon, has been seen in the company of her cutout husband, Lieutenant Colonel Randall Holbrook.

``Mary has taken Randy to different events," Branscom said.

But then again, that's almost expected.

``I think it's wonderful," Branscom said. ``My Flat Daddy sits in my dining room all the time. He even went to Easter dinner with us at my family's house."

I wonder how many of these military wives will find that Cardboard Daddy is the perfect husband. After all, if the real one never washed the dishes, never helped with housework, never wanted to go anywhere SHE wanted to go, and never talk to them other than in monosyllabic grunts, they might find a cardboard cutout who doesn't talk back when yelled at, doesn't demand sex, doesn't drink milk out of the carton, doesn't eat the last cookie and forget to tell her they need more, and quietly and cooperatively will go to chick flicks to be preferable to the real thing.

mercredi 30 août 2006

Keith Olbermann gets in touch with his inner Ed Murrow

Keith Olbermann makes no bones about Edward R. Murrow being his journalistic role model. At the same time as he can't decide whether he wants his show to be The Daily Show with real news, or real news with snark, the ghost of Ed Murrow never strays far from his shoulder. Tonight, Murrow whispered in his hear, and what came out is the kind of masterful, important news commentary that is also a cri de coeur -- the likes of which we haven't seen since Murrow took down Joe McCarthy. The target tonight is Donald Rumsfeld. Crooks and Liars has the video here.

Al Sofra Pizza, Pide and Kebab House, Auburn

In Cabramatta you will find pho houses. In Auburn, it is all about the kebab.Kebab shops line the main street of Auburn, their windows filled with pide, their backlit menus on the same sea blue background. Thick glistening columns of meat, as wide and sturdy as a forest tree trunk, rotate slowly behind the counter, a charcoal grill hisses when marinated meat skewers hit its surface.We had skipped

Al Sofra Pizza, Pide and Kebab House, Auburn

President Delusional sticks to the script in New Orleans

Did anyone expect anything different?

He did not stray far from his script nor venture out of his motorcade as it sped past some of the worst destruction in the Lower Ninth Ward, where rows of gutted homes stood along deserted streets.

Instead, in a series of upbeat events designed to underscore progress, Mr. Bush struck an optimistic — and at times almost defiant — tone. He portrayed the anniversary as a starting point, deflecting questions about slow results. And although he faced several challenges throughout the day, including a large banner that read “Bush Failure” as his motorcade passed, Mr. Bush kept his focus on future improvements. He met privately with several residents, but the White House did not disclose their conversations.

Away from the presidential tour, there was private weeping at some of the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward, and at City Hall bereaved family members signed a giant banner with hundreds of fleurs-de-lis, the city’s symbol, one for each victim. At 9:38 a.m., Mayor C. Ray Nagin sounded a large silver bell on the City Hall steps to mark a catastrophic early levee breach.

Huddling with loved ones at home, attending a ceremony in the heat or simply working on their houses, the city’s citizens, it seemed, were reflecting Tuesday on the disaster one year ago that altered a way of life here for a long while, if not forever.

[snip]

After spending the night at his ranch, Mr. Bush will spend the rest of this week shifting his focus away from Hurricane Katrina and back toward another landmark of his presidency, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He is scheduled to make campaign stops in Arkansas and Tennessee on Wednesday before delivering what is expected to be a major address on terrorism in Salt Lake City on Thursday.

Mr. Bush had at least one exchange with a local resident that made reference to the flawed response last year, and his role in it.

As Mr. Bush squeezed through tables at a pancake house where he ate breakfast, , a waitress asked, “Mr. President, are you going to turn your back on me?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied, with a laugh and a pause. “Not again.”

Translation: Now that Bush has fulfilled his obligation to speeding through the worst-hit parts of New Orleans, choosing instead a photo-op with Fats Domino, he's back to doing what he thinks he does best -- using the corpses of 9/11/01 to try to prop up his sagging political fortunes.

In his speech yesterday, Bush essentially told people to pray because no one other than God is going to help them, and inadvertently told them that he's full of shit about his promises last year:

Some of you still don't know whether you have a neighborhood to come back to. Others of you who made the decision to return are living in trailers. Many are separated from their loved ones, and simply long just go to church on a Sunday afternoon with somebody you care about. Many of you find yourself without jobs, and struggling to make do without the convenience of a supermarket nearby. Many fear for your safety because of violent criminals. The challenge is not only to help rebuild, but the challenge is to help restore the soul.

I take full responsibility for the federal government's response, and a year ago I made a pledge that we will learn the lessons of Katrina and that we will do what it takes to help you recover. (Applause.) I've come back to New Orleans to tell you the words that I spoke on Jackson Square are just as true today as they were then.

Which means "not at all true," because the Federal government's performance in rebuilding has been abysmal.

As for the pancake house waitress, who Yahoo! News identified as Joyce Labruzzo, and the pancake house identified as Betsy's Pancake House, Christy Hardin Smith put it best:

I swear, if I were in NOLA, I’d be having pancakes for breakfast every single day for a month, just to keep giving that woman a big ole tip.

When your idols show their feet of clay

Everyone sooner or later has that experience when the famous person whose work they admire does something dumb, or offensive, or in some way steps over the line. You may have known perfectly well for years that Jerry Garcia used too many drugs, but the music was so good you were willing to look past that -- until he drops dead at 53 in a rehab clinic. Yes, the cause of death was officially a heart attack and sleep apnea, but he was in a freaking rehab clinic. Maybe you've watched Kenneth Branagh's Henry V ten times, but it just isn't as good anymore now that you know how he ended up treating Emma Thompson. And if you were a Mets fan last year, once Anna Benson opened her mouth, you no longer cared what her husband Kris did on the mound, because what kind of a guy marries a skeeze like this?

Now it's no secret that in my view, life just hasn't been the same since the cancellation of Morning Sedition last November. It's also no secret that few bloggers, if any, have been bigger Marc Maron boosters than Your Humble Blogger. I take credit that I'm not as bad as that bizarre woman Leslie who called Sam Seder's show last night when Maron was a guest and sounded vaguely stalkerish, but since April 1, 2004, I've been as good a non-insane evangelist for Maron's work as it's possible to be.

It's also no secret that I have battled with my weight most of my life, and in middle age my weight seems to have won. Of course at 4'10", the progeny of overweight parents and never particularly athletic, this was sort of inevitable, but here I am.

I rarely eat at fast food restaurants, and when I do it's Wendy's, where I get either a Mandarin Orange Chicken Salad or a small chili with a side salad; or Subway, where I get one of those 6" low-fat Jared-the-Subway-Guy sandwiches. I don't drink sugary sodas. I enjoy good food, which is probably the problem, because at my height, with a metabolism that's so slow the only time I lost significant weight in my life was the time I was on 300-800 calories a day, going to 1-hour aerobics classes five nights a week -- and I lost 13 pounds in 16 weeks. That's it. I was starving, crying all the time, hungry all the time -- and I lost less weight than most people do by simply cutting out the bag of chips at lunch.

So I have been fighting this losing battle with my weight, trying to be active and ending up with chronic sciatica and hip problems after doing step aerobics for the last two years -- and not losing any weight.

Yes, I'm too fat. Yes, my BMI is over 30. But it's not for lack of trying. And it doesn't help when newspapers tout a National Cancer Institute study finding that even a few pounds overweight, especially for women, results in a 20-40% higher risk of death. That this contradicts another study by by the NCI and the Centers for Disease Control which found that slightly obese people had a LOWER risk of death.

I'm always skeptical of studies like this, not just because their findings are all over the lot, but because the bias against overweight in this country is so pervasive that I have a hard time believing that these protocols are structured with an eye towards overcoming these biases. And when studies like this one and another showing a higher death risk from ovarian cancer among obese women seem to show higher risk for women than men from being overweight, I compare these results against a society in which sitcoms show paunchy fat guys with anorexic-looking wives in tight jeans, and I wonder just how carefully these protocols are being written.

This particular study used BMI as an index to measure obesity, at the same time that new research seems to show that BMI is not a reliable index. But guess which research got all the press. And tucked away in the ovarian cancer study is is this:

According to the researchers, the findings are not definitive because the sample population was small and because the researchers used a study method that entailed using data from previous studies. In addition, the findings might not be definite because obese women might receive a lower dose of chemotherapy than nonobese women in relation to their body surface, which could allow the tumor to grow in those women; fluid in the body cavity might have artificially increased the BMI of some women; and other conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, which are more common among obese women, could have affected the obese participants' survival rates. However, the researchers said that it is unlikely the variables caused the lower survival rate of the women and that the additional fat tissue in overweight and obese women is more likely the cause of the additional risk of death...

And why is it unlikely? Is it perhaps to cover the behinds of physicians? Just asking, is all.

I have no doubt that there are obese people in this country, particularly children, who are obese because they eat too many Big Macs and drink too much high-fructose corn syrup-laden sodas and too many Frappuccinos, and whose diet consists of high-fat meats and too much pasta. But I've known any number of obese people who actually eat far less than their thin counterparts. I've gone to lunch with thin people who are still putting it away long after I've put 2/3 of my food in a take-home container. Sometimes those thin counterparts are more active, but not always. I know a young woman who's a size 2, but has chronic digestive problems and migraines. And these "researchers" will tell you she's healthier than I am.

So it's against this backdrop of contradictory science in which only the "lose weight now" studies get the attention, that we get back to the point of this entry, which is when your idols have feet of clay, and in this case it's about Marc Maron.

It seems that life in the nip and tuck capital of the world has affected Mr. Maron, for he's decided that picking on fat people is worth including in his comedy repertoire. That this most incisive of political humorists during his time on progressive talk radio has reverted back to fat jokes is pretty damn pathetic, if you ask me. The bit takes the form of fat marshals posted at fast food restaurants telling fat people not to order certain items. Oh, that's a knee-slapper, isn't it? Has anyone ever gone to a restaurant where there wasn't some busybody looking askance at a fat person eating something that our culture says overweight people shouldn't eat -- or worse, confronting that person -- a perfect stranger -- on it? These are the same people who tell pregnant women they shouldn't drink wine, and it's none of their damn business.

Marc Maron makes a lot of noise about being formerly fat, so he says knows how hard it is to keep one's weight down, but I suspect that he's formerly fat the way I was fat in high school, which is to say "only in one's own mind." I understand that when you live in L.A. and you're in show business, being fat is worse than having cancer, but that doesn't make it funny. And even if you DO manage to have some kind of career in stand-up as a fat guy, you're going to end up playing Edna Turnblad in the Las Vegas production of Hairspray.

So if Marc Maron is reading this (and if you are, post in the comments why), here's a little word of advice? Lose the fat jokes. They're cheap, they're not funny, and I know you're capable of better.

mardi 29 août 2006

We Have Not Forgotten (Warning: graphic images)

Randi Rhodes/Habitat for Humanity Change for Change program

Eric Rice (Eric is still doing animal rescue in the Katrina-affected area as well as working to help rebuild homes. You may also contact him at ericrice3-at-comcast-dot-net to see how you can help.

Katrina Help Portal - lots of listings of help needed and organizations doing relief work

Noah's Wish - following their amazing pet rescue efforts in the aftermath of Katrina, Noah's Wish is now involved in mobilizing for natural disasters.

Network for Good - another portal to relief organizations earmarking donations so designated to Katrina survivors.

It's Definitely Spring

Snapped last Sunday at Sydney Olympic Park during the Boulevard Market: Just Desserts--Pudding and Pie.

It's Definitely Spring

Snapped last Sunday at Sydney Olympic Park during the Boulevard Market: Just Desserts--Pudding and Pie.

President Delusional: "Who you gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"

That's about the sum-total of Bush's visit to the Gulf Coast yesterday:

Mr. Bush, his presidency still marred one year later by the slow government response to the storm, spent the afternoon demonstrating his empathy and optimism in meetings with residents and officials along the storm-wracked coast. The trip marked an attempt by Mr. Bush to recast the legacy of the year before, when he lingered on the other side of the country before cutting short his vacation to deal with the crisis.

Mr. Bush acknowledged that, for some, rebuilding may have been so gradual as to seem non-existent. But, Mr. Bush said: “For a fellow who was here and now a year later comes back, things have changed.”

“I feel a quiet sense of determination that’s going to shape the future of Mississippi,” he continued.

And then, in comments that could have been as applicable to the other main challenge of his administration — Iraq — Mr. Bush said: “As this part of the world flourishes, and businesses grow, people will find work and have the wherewithal to rebuild their lives.”

Mr. Bush delivered his remarks at an intersection in a working-class Biloxi neighborhood against a carefully orchestrated backdrop of neatly reconstructed homes. Just a few feet out of camera range stood gutted houses with wires dangling from interior ceilings. A tattered piece of crime scene tape hung from a tree in the field where Mr. Bush spoke. A toilet seat lay on its side in the grass.

Mr. Bush praised the optimism and grit of the people of Mississippi, and he reaffirmed his belief in neighborly cooperation as well as government help. “A year ago, I committed our federal government to help you,” he said. “I said we have a duty to help the local people recover and rebuild. I meant what I said.”

Can you believe it? He's PROUD that he said a year ago that he'd help, and rebuilding has still barely begun.

Here's more:

“The truth of the matter is, we can work together and will, but when disaster strikes, the first people that you rely upon, the people that matter most, are your friends,” Mr. Bush said at another point. “It’s friends helping friends that turns out to make an enormous difference in saving lives and helping to get by the trauma of the first days.”

Translation: It may be a year later, but this is still the "first days" as far as I'm concerned, because I've been asleep at the switch for a year where the Gulf coast is concerned. So you'd better rely on your friends, because at the White House, we don't give a flying fuck."

Hell hath no fury like Brownie scorned

Brownie isn't going away quietly, and the nation may be better off for it:

The ousted head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency says the White House wanted him to lie about the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Former Director Michael Brown told ABC News' "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday he stood by comments in a Playboy interview, and President Bush wanted him to take the heat for the bungling.

"The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working as a team. Behind the scenes, it wasn't working at all," Brown said. "There were political considerations going into all the discussions. There was the fact that New Orleans did not evacuate and the mayor (Ray Nagin) had no plan."

Brown said it was natural to "want to put the spin on that things are working the way they're supposed to do. And behind the scenes, they're not. Again, my biggest mistake was just not leveling with the American public and saying, 'Folks, this isn't working.'"

The former FEMA chief cited what he called an e-mail "from a very high source in the White House that says the president at a Cabinet meeting said, 'Thank goodness Brown's taking all the heat because it's better that he takes the heat than I do.'"

I hope Michael Brown is taking care for his safety. This kind of disloyalty to The Family is not smiled upon, and usually has consequences.

The Delusions of Donald Rumsfeld

According to the doddering, senile old fool who's currently serving as Secretary of Defense, it's the fault of the media -- the very same media that's been carrying the Administration's water for five years -- that Americans no longer support the war.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence Westerners.

"That's the thing that keeps me up at night," he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.

"What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"They can lie with impunity," he said, while U.S. troops are held to a high standard of conduct.

[snip]

Later, at a Reno, Nev., convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Rumsfeld made similar points.

"The enemy lies constantly — almost totally without penalty," he told the veterans group, which presented him with the Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award. "They portray our cause as a war on Islam when in fact the overwhelming majority of victims of their terrorism have been the thousands and thousands of innocent Muslims — men, women and children — that they have killed."

He added, "While some at home argue for tossing in the towel, the enemy is waiting and hoping that we will do just that."

Rumsfeld often complains about what he calls the terrorists' success in persuading Westerners that the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a crusade against Islam. In his remarks at Fallon he did not offer any new examples of media manipulation; he put unusual emphasis, however, on the negative impact it is having on Americans in an era of 24-hour news.

"The enemy is so much better at communicating," he added. "I wish we were better at countering that because the constant drumbeat of things they say — all of which are not true — is harmful. It's cumulative. And it does weaken people's will and lessen their determination, and raise questions in their minds as to whether the cost is worth it," he said alluding to Americans and other Westerners.

Fascinating. The Secretary of Defense spent the day yesterday making his own military and the President of the United States look hapless and helpless in the face of Evil Geniuses is caves manipulating the U.S. media -- and that's why only a third of Americans still support the war.

Also fascinating is Rumsfeld'd reference to a "constant drumbeat of the things they say." Projection much, Rummy? If anyone has beat a drum, it's the Administration. It's the Administration that has beaten the drum of Iraq-9/11-Iraq-9/11-Iraq-9/11, then claims that it has not said that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

"The enemy is so much better at communicating", he says. Again, a bunch of guys living in caves, seemingly opposed to all things modern, are better at communicating than the supposedly intelligent men who lead this country and their lapdogs who broadcast the news over the airwaves on stations owned by defense contractors and Republican campaign contributors. Is Rummy finally acknowledging that his boss can't string together a coherent English sentence? And that the "Death to America" crowd in the Middle East is better at winning over the hearts and minds of their people than this supposedly sophisticated, always-on-message Administration?

This is what they're reduced to, folks -- sending Rummy out to blame Dr. Evil and his manipulation of the media for their own failings.

lundi 28 août 2006

Inside Mel Gibson's Brain

Sure, it's a cheap shot, but it's funny:

It must be nice to be able to blame everyone else for your failings

...and to have a huge assortment of toadies ready to put the meme that you aren't responsible for ANY of your fuckups out there for the world to see.

This rave for an upcoming ABC miniseries about 9/11 comes from a so-called conservative:

This is the first Hollywood production I’ve seen that honestly depicts how the Clinton administration repeatedly bungled the capture of Osama Bin Laden. One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin Laden’s house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly thereafter bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing over 225 men, women, and children, and wounding over 4000. The episode is a perfect example of Clinton-era irresponsibility and incompetence.

The miniseries also has a scene in which the CIA has crucial information identifying some of the 9/11 hijackers in advance of 9/11, but refuses to share the information with the FBI because of the “wall” put up by certain Democrat officials to prevent information sharing between government agencies. The CIA is depicted as sitting in a meeting with the FBI (with John O’Neil present), and showing the FBI surveillance photos of terrorism suspects - some of whom will later turn out to be the 9/11 hijackers. The CIA asks the FBI for help in identifying the men in the photos, but refuses to give the FBI any of the information they have on who the men are. John O’Neil protests that it’s impossible for the FBI to help the CIA identify the men if they won’t provide any information whatsoever on them. When O’Neil tells the FBI to keep the photos so they can at least work on them, the CIA becomes hostile to O’Neil and takes the photos back. Tragically, John O’Neil himself will later die in the 9/11 attacks, in part because agencies like the CIA refused to share crucial information like this. Scenes like these really challenge the prevailing liberal media and Hollywood mindset by showing that the Patriot Act's information-sharing and surveillance provisions are crucial to the safety of this country, and that political correctness and bureaucratic inefficiency are Islamic terrorism’s greatest friend.

You know, as I recall, back in the late 1990's, when Bill Clinton was trying mightily to address the threat presented by Osama Bin Laden, the Republicans and their little lapdog Joe Lieberman were too busy trying to throw him out of office because of a blowjob (oh spare me the "It's not the sex, it's the lying bullshit; we all know that this bunch thinks lies are perfectly acceptable when it's THEIR guy lying about things more important than trying to hide a tawdry sexual liaison) to allow him to do what needed to be done. Bill Clinton wasn't their guy, and they tried for eight years to destroy him -- whatever the cost. And we now see what that cost was.

But the corporate-owned ABC network, pledged to protect and defend George W. Bush at all costs, is perfectly willing to pick up Bush's baton that the 9/11 attacks were the fault of both his own father and Bill Clinton, rather than face the fact that their little sock puppet may have destroyed their gravy train with his incompetence.

I'm not sure that even Lost is worth supporting this bunch.

Best. Campaign. Video. Ever.

If the song sounds like Squirrel Nut Zippers' Put a Lid on it, it's because the song was written by ex-SNZ's Tom Maxwell and Ken Mosher, who perform it, along with Rickie Lee Jones. The campaign of Coleen Rowley (yes, THAT Coleen Rowley, who alerted the FBI about Zacarias Moussaoui and was ignored), who is running for Congress in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District against the John Kline pictured, put together the video.

More here.

(via Atrios)

Just Desserts at The Boulevard Markets, Sydney Olympic Park

A little bit of Africa at Sydney Olympic Park

Please note: The Boulevard Market has been discontinued

The Boulevard Markets have been happening at Sydney Olympic Park for over a year now, but it was only yesterday that I finally headed over check them out. The lure of a cooking demonstration, titled Just Desserts--Pudding and Pie, may have had something to do with it, but I'm not telling. =)

Just Desserts at The Boulevard Markets, Sydney Olympic Park

Remember when they told you, "Work hard and you'll get ahead"?

Well, they lied to you:

With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a prolonged increase in real wages for most workers.

[snip]

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Until the last year, stagnating wages were somewhat offset by the rising value of benefits, especially health insurance, which caused overall compensation for most Americans to continue increasing. Since last summer, however, the value of workers’ benefits has also failed to keep pace with inflation, according to government data.

At the very top of the income spectrum, many workers have continued to receive raises that outpace inflation, and the gains have been large enough to keep average income and consumer spending rising.

Translation: The outrageous pay packages of senior executives are masking how the average worker is getting screwed.

polls show that Americans are less dissatisfied with the economy than they were in the early 1980’s or early 90’s. Rising house and stock values have lifted the net worth of many families over the last few years, and interest rates remain fairly low.

But polls show that Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy by wide margins and that anxiety about the future is growing. Earlier this month, the University of Michigan reported that consumer confidence had fallen sharply in recent months, with people’s expectations for the future now as downbeat as they were in 1992 and 1993, when the job market had not yet recovered from a recession.

“Some people who aren’t partisans say, ‘Yes, the economy’s pretty good, so why are people so agitated and anxious?’ ” said Frank Luntz, a Republican campaign consultant. “The answer is they don’t feel it in their weekly paychecks.”

[snip]

In the first quarter of 2006, wages and salaries represented 45 percent of gross domestic product, down from almost 50 percent in the first quarter of 2001 and a record 53.6 percent in the first quarter of 1970, according to the Commerce Department. Each percentage point now equals about $132 billion.

Total employee compensation — wages plus benefits — has fared a little better. Its share was briefly lower than its current level of 56.1 percent in the mid-1990’s and otherwise has not been so low since 1966.

Over the last year, the value of employee benefits has risen only 3.4 percent, while inflation has exceeded 4 percent, according to the Labor Department.

[snip]

For most of the last century, wages and productivity — the key measure of the economy’s efficiency — have risen together, increasing rapidly through the 1950’s and 60’s and far more slowly in the 1970’s and 80’s.

But in recent years, the productivity gains have continued while the pay increases have not kept up. Worker productivity rose 16.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, while total compensation for the median worker rose 7.2 percent, according to Labor Department statistics analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. Benefits accounted for most of the increase.

“If I had to sum it up,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the institute, “it comes down to bargaining power and the lack of ability of many in the work force to claim their fair share of growth.”

Nominal wages have accelerated in the last year, but the spike in oil costs has eaten up the gains. Now the job market appears to be weakening, after a protracted series of interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve.

Unless these trends reverse, the current expansion may lack even an extended period of modest wage growth like one that occurred in the mid-1980’s.

The most recent recession ended in late 2001. Hourly wages continued to rise in 2002 and peaked in early 2003, largely on the lingering strength of the 1990’s boom.

Average family income, adjusted for inflation, has continued to advance at a good clip, a fact Mr. Bush has cited when speaking about the economy. But these gains are a result mainly of increases at the top of the income spectrum that pull up the overall numbers. Even for workers at the 90th percentile of earners — making about $80,000 a year — inflation has outpaced their pay increases over the last three years, according to the Labor Department.

Actually, those workers not in that top 10 percent DO feel it in their weekly paychecks, though because of the rising value of their homes in recent years, people have been able to mask their declining economic condition by tapping their home equity. However, that particular gravy train has now left the station as well.

Global economist Noriel Roubini paints a picture of the recession that's coming as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble that is going to be extremely ugly. Americans have been propping up the economy with home equity masquerading as income and ever-spiralling amounts of debt. But the party's over. The hard landing is as inevitable now as Hurricane Katrina was if you lived on the Gulf Coast a year ago, and it's going to hit you whether you own a house or not. Nothing can prevent it now, and it's going to be nasty, brutish, and long:

The current slump in housing will have a much more severe effect on the economy than the tech investment bust of 2000 for several reasons. The wealth effect of the tech bust was limited to the elite of folks who had stocks in the NASDAQ. The wealth effect of now falling housing prices affects every home-owning household. The link between housing wealth rising, increased home equity withdrawal (HEW) and consumption of durable and non durables is very significant (see RGE’s Christian Menegatti brief on this), much more than the effect of the tech bubbles of the 1990s. This is exactly what San Francisco Fed President Yellen worried about in her speech last week. Last year, out of the $800 billion of HEW at least $150 or possibly $200 billion was spent on consumption and another good $100 billion plus went into residential investment (i.e. house capital improvements/expansions). It is enough for house price to flatten – as they started to do recently – let alone start falling as they are doing now since they are beginning to fall in major markets – for the wealth effect to disappear, the HEW dribble to low levels and for consumption to sharply fall.

A housing slump is a triple whammy for the economy. First, the 6.3% fall in residential investment in Q2 will be followed for the next few quarters by a much larger fall, at least 10% and possibly 15% in such investment. Second, the effects on consumption of housing will be severe: already in Q2 durable consumption is falling as falling home purchases lead to lower purchases of furniture, home appliances and other housing-related durable goods. Third, the employment effects of housing are serious; up to 30% of the employment growth in the last three years was due – directly or indirectly – to housing. As housing slumps, the job and income and wage losses in housing will percolate throughout the economy.

The bills are due, folks. I'm no economist, but recent insecurity at my own workplace led me six months ago to work hard at eliminating all of my non-discretionary debt. So pay off those credit cards NOW if you can, and forego whatever luxuries you can in order to pay them off. Those who have tapped all their home equity to turn their ranches and cape cods into McMansions, or to buy new SUVs and plasma TVs, and those who bought houses with ARMs and interest-only mortgages in the last year and took out extra cash to remodel the house just the way they wanted it are basically screwed.

It would be easy for people like Mr. B. and Your Humble Blogger, who bought in 1996, refinanced three times as rates dropped, and haven't done anything to the house that couldn't be done with ready cash, to be smug. But if you too fall into this category, hold the schädenfreude, because what's coming is going to affect us too.

So when Republicans talk this fall about how great the economy is doing, just keep in mind that they're just whistling past the graveyard.

dimanche 27 août 2006

If the Washington Post spun any faster, it'd puke

This is what the once-proud newspaper that broke the story of the Watergate break-in has been reduced to:

Service in Iraq: Just How Risky?

The consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom for U.S. forces are being documented by the Defense Department with an exceptional degree of openness and transparency. Its daily and cumulative counts of deaths receive a great deal of publicity. But deaths alone don't indicate the risk for an individual. For this purpose, the number of deaths must be compared with the number of individuals exposed to the risk of death. The Defense Department has supplied us with appropriate data on exposure, and we take advantage of it to provide the first profile of military mortality in Iraq.

Between March 21, 2003, when the first military death was recorded in Iraq, and March 31, 2006, there were 2,321 deaths among American troops in Iraq. Seventy-nine percent were a result of action by hostile forces. Troops spent a total of 592,002 "person-years" in Iraq during this period. The ratio of deaths to person-years, .00392, or 3.92 deaths per 1,000 person-years, is the death rate of military personnel in Iraq.

How does this rate compare with that in other groups? One meaningful comparison is to the civilian population of the United States. That rate was 8.42 per 1,000 in 2003, more than twice that for military personnel in Iraq.

The comparison is imperfect, of course, because a much higher fraction of the American population is elderly and subject to higher death rates from degenerative diseases. The death rate for U.S. men ages 18 to 39 in 2003 was 1.53 per 1,000 -- 39 percent of that of troops in Iraq. But one can also find something equivalent to combat conditions on home soil. The death rate for African American men ages 20 to 34 in Philadelphia was 4.37 per 1,000 in 2002, 11 percent higher than among troops in Iraq. Slightly more than half the Philadelphia deaths were homicides.

The death rate of American troops in Vietnam was 5.6 times that observed in Iraq. Part of the reduction in the death rate is attributable to improvements in military medicine and such things as the use of body armor. These have reduced the ratio of deaths to wounds from 24 percent in Vietnam to 13 percent in Iraq.

So let's all cheer because fighting in Iraq is safer than being black and male in Philadelphia! Let's all cheer because instead of being sent home in a box, a generation of American kids is coming home maimed for life.

Have you ever seen anything as ludicrous outside of The O'Reilly Factor? I know that WaPo's policy now is to stick its proboscis as far up the anus of George W. Bush as possible, but this is ridiculous.

Somehow I don't think you're going to see Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez in this sort of exchange any time soon

...not even with Shawn Green now a Met.

But in Boston, when you put Denis Leary in the booth, all bets are off:

Chosen people indeed.

(via Hoffmania)

Time to kick Joe Lieberman out of the Democratic Party

Last week, Joe Lieberman campaigned for Connecticut Republicans, and has referred to Ned Lamont's support for withdrawal from Iraq as "a victory for the terrorists."

But when a withdrawal plan is offered by a REPUBLICAN, Lieberman is all for it:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the three-term Democrat whose independent campaign for re-election is being seen as a referendum on the Iraq war, said Friday he would consider taking a look at a fellow lawmaker's proposal for a timeline for troop withdrawals.

The proposal was floated by Republican Rep. Chris Shays, another Connecticut politician facing a tough re-election battle with an anti-war candidate. Shays has long been a supporter of the war and previously opposed withdrawal timetables.

"It seems to me that Chris is saying, maybe we ought to set some goals for when we want to get out, and I'd like to see what he has in mind before I comment on it," Lieberman said while campaigning in New Haven.

"As I've said to you over and over again, the sooner we get out of Iraq, the better it's going to be for the Iraqis and us, but if we leave too soon for reasons of American politics, it's going to be disaster for the Iraqis and for us," he said.

Shays proposed a timeline Thursday on a telephone conference call from London with reporters following his 14th visit to Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"We should be able to tell the American people what kind of timeline we can have to begin to draw down our troops," he said. "It may be a timeline the American people don't want to hear. It may not be something that brings them out quickly."

"Timeline." Did you notice that? Lieberman is willing to consider a timeline -- if it's offered by a Republican.

It's time for Schumer and Reid to wake up and smell the coffee. This guy is a Republican. If elected as the "Me Me Me" party candidate, he will caucus with the Republicans. It's time for these guys to get behind the party's nominee and stop running an incumbency protection racket.

(Hat tip: Atrios)

Republicans: Making the world safe for bigots and racists

Macaca indeed. Hot on the heels of George Allen's "macaca" remarks last week come two of the most reprehensibly racist incidents in recent memory.

Coushatta, Louisiana (reported August 25):

Nine black children attending schools in northwestern Louisiana's Red River Parish were directed last week to the back of a school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children, the mother of one of the children said.

"All nine children were assigned to two seats in the back of the bus and the older ones had to hold the smaller ones in their laps," Iva Richmond, mother of two of the children, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Red River Parish Schools Superintendent Kay Easley, did not return a call for comment Thursday. The (Shreveport) Times newspaper said Easley acknowledged that she has investigated the claim and confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday. She would not comment further, the newspaper said.

Richmond said her children, ages 14 and 15, had long had a black bus driver, but their bus assignment was changed this year. When they started school earlier this month, a white driver was at the wheel. The driver told the children that she had assigned seats to the white students on the bus and ordered the black children to sit in the back.

And now this, from Saltillo, Mississippi:

A pastor who says his congregation voted not to accept black membership has resigned. The church says it never made such a decision.

The Rev. John Stevens says Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo voted not to approve blacks as members during a scheduled Sunday night business meeting Aug. 6. Because of the decision, Stevens stepped down from the Baptist Missionary Alliance congregation that has an average Sunday morning attendance of 30 people.

According to Stevens, the church made race an issue after a biracial 12-year-old boy, Joe, began attending Fellowship Baptist with his temporary guardians.

The church was "afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church," Stevens said. "I could not go along with that. There would always be a wall between us, so I resigned that night."

[snip]

In July Joe moved in with his uncle and aunt, Saltillo residents Jason and Melinda Kirk. The Kirks, who had been attending Fellowship Baptist for almost five months, were Joe's temporary guardians until recently, when his stepmother moved here from Ohio.

During the week of July 23-26, Fellowship Baptist held revival services, and on July 26, Joe became a Christian.

The following Sunday, people at the church asked the Kirks if they would become members, and the family started praying about it.

The next Sunday morning, Aug. 6, the Kirks went to Fellowship Baptist. When company arrived at their house that afternoon, they decided not to go to the church that night.

Later that evening, the Kirks received a phone call from their pastor, Stevens, who said the church had voted not to accept black membership. The minister, 72, who has now retired, said he had resigned from the church over the decision.

Joe overheard the telephone conversation.

"We explained to him that everybody didn't feel like that," Melinda Kirk said. "But it really bothered him. He felt like our pastor had to quit his job because of him."

The Kirks reassured their nephew that Stevens was just standing up for what is right.

"People have got to realize we're all God's children," Jason Kirk said. "It's not God so loved the white people; it's God so loved the world."

Since Stevens' resignation, one church member who was not at the Aug. 6 meeting has called the former pastor and told him he was in favor of what he did. Stevens estimates 80 percent of the church is against having blacks as members of the congregation.

As we head into a week which marks the one-year anniversary of the day Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, leaving tens of thousands of black New Orleans residents stranded or dying, while the President of the United States was yukking it up with 2008 Presidential hopeful John McCain over birthday cake:

...one has to wonder what has created a climate in which once again, people in the United States believe it acceptable to push black schoolchildren to the back of a school bus and ban them from church.

I believe it's a by-produce of the same anti-immigrant fervor that has gripped the Republican party for the last six months, evern since Republicans realized that the Iraq war issue is no longer working for them.

The anti-immigration rhetoric isn't about all immigrants, it's specifically about dark-skinned immigrants. Leave it to old reliable Pat Buchanan to blow the cover off what's really driving the immigration issue:

In his new book, State of Emergency, Pat Buchanan argues for “an immediate moratorium on all immigration.” Why? To preserve the dominance of the white race in America. Buchanan explains on pg. 11:

America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built. No nation has ever undergone so radical a demographic transformation and survived.

Indeed, Buchanan argues quite explicitly that only whites have the appropriate “genetic endowments” to keep America from collapsing. From pg. 164:

In 1994, Sam Francis, the syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times…volunteered this thought:

“The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted by a different people.”

Had Francis said this of Chinese civilization and the Chinese people, it would have gone unnoted. But he was suggesting Western civilization was superior and that only Europeans could have created it. If Western peoples perish, as they are doing today, Francis was implying, we must expect our civilization to die with us. No one would deny that when the Carthaginians perished, Carthaginian civilization and culture perished. But by claiming the achievements of the West for Europeans, Francis had passed beyond the bounds of tolerance. He was summarily fired.

Buchanan goes on to praise those who, implicitly or explicitly, talk about the genetic superiority of the white race, including John Rocker of the Atlanta Braves, Bell Curve authors Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, and Al Campanis of the Los Angeles Dodgers. (Campanis said that blacks “may not have the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager.” He added that blacks were often poor swimmers “because they don’t have the buoyancy.”)

When George Allen called a dark-skinned worker for Jim Webb's campaign "macaca", he waasn't talking about his hairstyle, or creating a term for someone he regards as a shithead with a mohawk. He was using a word he knew damn well was a racial slur. What would make a potential presidential hopeful do such a thing? Because he knew that HIS crowd, HIS party, HIS constituents, the people who would vote for HIM, would not object.

You can trot Condoleeza Rice out there till the cows come home, it doesn't change the fact that when it comes to black Americans who do not serve the Republican party, as far as that party is concerned, they might as well drown.

Haldon Street Festival 2006, Lakemba

It was the annual Haldon Street Festival in Lakemba yesterday. Once again I joined the family-strong crowds to stroll Haldon Street which was closed off to traffic and set up with stalls.Lakemba is a real multicultural melting pot in the south west of Sydney. Greek and Italian migrants settled here in the 1960s, in the 1970s it received an influx of migrants from Lebanon. The Lebanese have a

Haldon Street Festival 2006, Lakemba

samedi 26 août 2006

Losing a city

I don't know why anyone still believes the Bush Administration is competent to handle anything. Iraq? FUBAR. Job market? FUBAR. Fuel prices? FUBAR. Housing prices? On their way to FUBAR, carrying the rest of the economy with them. And the non-wealthy, non-tourist sections of New Orleans? Utterly FUBAR.

Do you honestly believe that if we were talking about sections where wealthy white people lived, this would still be going on:

So far, the city has collected only $117 million to start the repair work in what has been billed as the largest urban restoration in U.S. history.

For every repair project, city officials must follow a lengthy application process — and spend their own money — before getting a dime of federal aid to fix at least 833 projects such as police stations, courtrooms, baseball fields or auditoriums.

Residents don't care much what the cause is. They're just tired of crater-like potholes, sudden drops in water pressure and debris-clogged storm drains.

"We're not asking for a lot. At this point, we're just looking for basic services: power, gas, water. Sewer that doesn't back up into your house would be nice too," said Jeb Bruneau, president of the neighborhood association in the Lakeview area. "Whatever the snafu was, the result is Joe Blow Citizen isn't seeing the effect of that federal money."

Louisiana eventually expects to get at least $25 billion in federal money for rebuilding projects, including everything from levee repairs to homeowner assistance. Of that money, $6 billion to $8 billion will be doled out statewide to repair broken roads, schools, water pipes and countless other problems.

But to get the money, the city — and other agencies such as the Sewerage and Water Board, the Regional Transit Authority and Orleans Parish School Board — must fill out worksheets for every construction project.

The worksheets are submitted to FEMA, which determines whether the project is eligible for federal aid. If approved, the federal government releases the approved money to the state, but the local government fronts the money to have the work done. After that, the local government can submit receipts for reimbursement.

The process takes months and can be further complicated if costs surpass the original request — a particular concern in New Orleans because of shortages of materials and construction workers.

It also requires the city have cash to pay upfront, forcing money to be diverted from other parts of the budget.

Bush says the rebuilding will "take time." The problem is, it has to START for it to "take time."

And just as an aside, Ned Lamont reminded us on Thursday just who it was who was highly instrumental in folding FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security:

In 2002, against the advice of experts like Clinton FEMA chief James Lee Witt and Brookings Institute senior fellow Ivo Daalder Sen. Lieberman plowed ahead folding FEMA into his shiny new Department of Homeland Security. Here's a warning from Ivo Daalder against putting FEMA in a giant bureaucracy from 6/25/02:

Daalder: Take FEMA. This is one of the best run federal government agencies. It has excellent record, gained through years of responding to natural disasters, of dealing with state and local government entities and first responders. In its FY2003 budget, the Bush administration proposed that FEMA take central control of all training and grant programs for first responders, providing state and local authorities with the kind of one-stop shopping and integrated training program they have long demanded. Why, then, tear an agency with such a successful record from its roots and integrate into a much larger bureaucracy, with new command and control lines? Much of its day-to-day responsibility has nothing to do with terrorism--and whatever responsibility it does have for this area is fundamentally different from the preventive and protective counter-terrorism functions of other parts of the proposed department. No one proposes to merge the diplomatic functions of the State Department with the military functions of the Pentagon, even though both have a role in national security policy--including in countering terrorism. Might it not be better, then, to leave FEMA be, and coordinate its counter-terrorism role as part of a well-functioning interagency process?

Lieberman ignored the advice of many Democratic experts and pushed ahead with his own vision for DHS. People of good will can disagree but shouldn't the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committe and later Ranking Member do some kind of operational oversight to ensure his vision was actually being fulfilled? Sen. Lieberman did no such thing. Just a week before Daalder's prescient testimony Sen. Lieberman confirmed Michael Brown as Deputy Director of FEMA in a 42-minute rubber stamp abomination of a hearing.

6/19/02: PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN (PDF)

Good morning. Welcome to you, Mr. Brown, and also to your wife, Tamara. We are here this morning for the nomination hearing of Michael Brown to become Deputy Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency--a government agency under much discussion these days, as we begin to reorganize government to better protect our citizens from terrorist attacks here at home. If, and I hope when, the Department of Homeland Security comes into existence, FEMA will be folded into the Department; we must ensure that the agency is equipped to function at the highest level today, and equipped to make the transition into the new department without losing a step tomorrow. Responding to terrorist attacks, of course, is just one piece of FEMA's mission. Re- cent floods in Minnesota and crippling forest fires in Colorado have reminded us of FEMA's critical, often life-saving role in helping Americans protect themselves from and recover from natural disasters....But because, by creating the Department of Homeland Security, we are in the throes of making such an important decision that will affect FEMA's historic and future responsibilities, I'd like to focus today on the agency's role as the lead federal agency responding to terrorist attacks.

Does Lieberman focus on terrorism at the expense of natural disaster readiness? More...

Based on a series of hearings on homeland security the Governmental Affairs Committee held last fall, it is crystal clear to me that effective coordination among and between layers of government is the crux of all quick and effective terror response. Therefore, FEMA must be an absolutely de- pendable link in that communications chain. It must ensure that the Federal Gov- ernment's entire emergency response network is a well-honed machine, and then that the Federal, state and local governments are just as well coordinated with one another. This is an immense challenge that FEMA has yet to meet. I am glad the President has nominated someone already familiar with FEMA's mission to become Deputy Director. Mr. Brown is currently General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer of the agency, a position he has held since February of 2001. Before joining the Bush Administration, I note from his resume, he served as execu- tive director of the Independent Electrical Contractors in Denver. In the early 1980s, Mr. Brown served as staff director of the Oklahoma Senate's Finance Com- mittee, while serving on the Edmund, Oklahoma, City Council. He ran for Congress in the sixth district, and, in what I think is particularly useful experience, early in his career, was assistant city manager in Edmond, with responsibility for police, fire and emergency services.

The advise and consent role of the Senate in confirming appointments is well-established. A good friend tells you when you have mustard on your chin, spinach in your teeth, or Michael Brown as a nominee. Joe Lieberman did none of these things for his friend President Bush. Instead he acted as a toady DC insider and just rubber stamped the nomination. This without making a single phone call as Chairman of the committee to verify the references of Michael Brown.

[snip]

Now on to Lieberman's remarks at the Brown hearing.

Chairman LIEBERMAN . Mr. Brown, I thank you very much. I will certainly support your nomination. I will do my best to move it through the Committee as soon as possible so we can have you fully and legally at work in your new position. In the meantime, I thank you very much. I thank your family for their support of you, and at this point, we will adjourn the hearing.

You can view the hearing video at this link. Scroll down to find the appropriate Senate hearing.

Am I being too hard on Senator Lieberman and his uber bipartisan twin Sen. Susan Collins of Maine? In a word, NO. In the 2 years and 7 months from the time of Gov. Tom Ridge's confirmation hearing as first Secretary of Homeland Security in Jan '03 to the time Katrina made landfall in the Gulf of Mexico Lieberman and Collins held exactly ZERO hearings on FEMA's operational readiness. ZERO. Z-E-R-O. Lieberman and Collins as Ranking Member and Chairman did hold one hearing on FEMA cash payouts in May 2005. I'll let Sen. Lieberman's words characterize that meeting for the record.

Sen. Lieberman(PDF): FEMA's mission of responding to natural disasters and of providing financial assistance to those harmed by them is an absolutely critical one - and one I completely support. That's not what this hearing is about.

In the same 2 years and 7 months Lieberman's committee found the time to confirm David Safavian, a man since convicted of 4 felony counts of obstruction as a Bush appointee. And the Liebeman/Collins vaudeville act found time for 7 separate hearings on Postal reform and 2 separate hearings on diploma mills. How effective can Lieberman/Collins be on stopping bogus degrees when they can't be bothered to check Michael Brown's resume references the same as a junior manager at McDonald's checking a new fry cook?

I'm ranting at this point but I just wanted to reinforce Ned Lamont's criticisms of Joe Lieberman on Homeland Security and FEMA specifically. Lieberman is all talk, no action.

That so little progress has been made in even cleanup, let alone rebuilding, is a disgrace. If you saw even a little of Spike Lee's documentary this week on HBO, it showed an American shame, an American disgrace -- the kind of abandonment of a group of people solely because they do not donate to campaigns. And this is what we're telling the rest of the world to emulate?

Me, me, and a big bag of Lindt balls

Here she is. My Lindt ball booty. Last weekend, you'll recall, Veruca Salt and I headed to a one-off Lindt warehouse chocolate sale way out in Eastern Creek, where the queue to enter was half-an-hour long and jostling bargain hunters attacked pallets of unopened boxes.But the prizes, oh the prizes...We have since worked out that much of the stock was 60-75% off. And Veruca also confirmed that

Me, me, and a big bag of Lindt balls

vendredi 25 août 2006

Five Things to Eat Before You Die

I've been tagged by Melissa for an ingenious meme: name five things you've eaten and think that everyone should eat at least once before they die.The idea of a Foodbloggers' Guide to the Globe is brilliant. Who better to provide a passionate list of must-eats in this world for the people than by the people?I've thought long and hard about my top five choice. So long, in fact, that I think I'm the

Five Things to Eat Before You Die

Trivial Nonsense Friday: Pimp My Kitchen

I haven't blogged on the Saga of the Minor Kitchen Remodel lately, largely because I've been stuck in one spot for the last few weeks. The old veneers are off the top cabinets and everything's been filled with wood putty sanded smooth.

I've purchased the makings of the special veneer-cutting board described in Herrick Kimball's Refacing Cabinets: Making an Old Kitchen New, and I'm ready to take the plunge and start veneering.

As those who have been following this saga know, the soffits have been painted Benjamin Moore Peale Green,

and the walls in the dining area painted "Rich Cream".

I'm leaning towards this Kronotex laminate for the flooring (and still haven't decided whether to let a professional do this or if I'm nutty enough to try it as a DIY job):

As anyone who's either done this kind of work him/herself or had contractors in can tell you, any kind of home improvement has a habit of escalating. So I've been looking ahead to the day when I can have that oven wall bump-out taken out and my cooktop replaced with a real range that can hold 4 cookie sheets at once or a turkey AND the scallopped potatoes.

The problem is that I will lose four cabinets in the process.

The kitchen is 9'6" by 17', with an L-shaped work area along two walls, a door and the damn bump-out along one long wall, and a dining area that has a blank wall the full 9'6" on one end that's perfect for adding storage.

At one time, I had thought of installing additional kitchen cabinets there, but since base cabinets are 24" deep and I only have 18" of clearance before hitting the doorway to the living room, that's out. So I've been investigating alternatives.

These fabulous modular cabinets appeared in the Home Depot Direct summer catalog. They would fit perfectly in the space with only about 3" extra on both sides. They are 16" deep (bottom cabinets) and 18" (top), so they won't block the doorway.

The center unit is a desk, which would give me a place to put catalogs and related clutter:

This is "real furniture", which will require taking time off work for delivery. It's also about $1000 more than the alternative, which is these lovelies from the Home Decorators catalog:

Of these, the light oak probably is closer to the existing cabinets, but the dark oak is much nicer. And closer to this table, which I am considering buying once the old budget recovers:

In case you're wondering where Mr. Brilliant comes into play here, his feeling is that anything not involving pink, lavender, or lace curtains is fine.

So take this dreary day, a Friday in the waning days of summer, and join me in taking a day off from the cares of the world, pour a cup of coffee and join me in my kitchen ruminations.

Trivial Nonsense Friday, or George Allen Emboldens Mark Burnett

With George Allen thinking, however fleetingly, that it's OK to call a dark-skinned person "macaca", and Conrad Burns joking about the "little Guatemalan man" who paints his house, and Mel Gibson's rants about Jews, and Pat Buchanan openly stating that immigration must be curbed in order to preserve white dominance, blatant racism seems to be gaining favor again in the U.S.

So leave it to reality show mogul Mark Burnett to seize on a zeitgeist when he sees one and tear the benign veneer off of the jewel in the crown, Survivor.

For twelve seasons, Burnett has given us an assortment of walking minority stereotypes and slurs. With bean-sneak Clarence Black in Survivor: Africa, Christian nutcase and immunity-idol-o-phobe Joanna Ward in Survivor: Amazon, preposterously fit Osten Taylor being the first person to quit the game for no good reason in Survivor: Pearl Islands, the oversexed stereotyping of Ted Rogers being accused of sexual assault by psychotic Ghandia Johnson in Survivor: Thailand, black Americans have not exactly been treated well by Burnett's editors. Even the snarkalicious Cirie Fields last season, no matter how funny and clever and game she may have been with her improbable fourth-place finish, was presented in confessional as the archetypal bobbing-head, fat, sassy black mama.

The rare Asians on the show haven't fared much better. Shii-Ann Huang was the too-smart-for-her-own-good calculating bitch. Daniel Lue, defying the stereotype of the skinny Asian male with his pumped-up musculature, was a first boot. And last season, 57-year-old karate black belt Bruce Kanegai was edited as the funny old guy doing karate chops and spending entirely too much time building a zen garden on the beach, who had to leave the game due to an impacted bowel that was described to the viewing audience in exquisite detail. That he was a talented artist and black belt hardly registered on the radar.

So with a tin ear worthy of George W. Bush, Burnett decided that the way to deal with the criticism of the lack of diversity on the show was to create a bigger cast and divide it into four tribes by what he calls "race" (which is actually "ethnicity", but why quibble when we're painting people with a broad brush?):

When the stunning news broke early yesterday that CBS would divide contestants on the next "Survivor" into four tribes based on race, we anxiously watched the traditional unveiling of the contestants on the network's "Early Show" because we had money riding on how fast "Survivor" host Jeff Probst would work the phrase "social experiment" into the interview.

"Survivor" executive producer Mark Burnett has been able to keep the reality series afloat for six years with stunts like pitting an all-male team against an all-female team. But a ratings plunge like the one the show suffered this past spring in its 12th edition -- fumbling nearly one-quarter of its audience compared with just two springs back -- called for something far more incendiary. Something that would whip the press into a frenzy amounting to millions of dollars worth of free publicity. Something "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" big -- something "Amish in the City" big.

So yesterday, on CBS's morning infotainment program, the network announced that for "Survivor: Cook Islands," which debuts next month, 20 contestants would be divided into the White Tribe, the African American Tribe, the Asian American Tribe and the Hispanic Tribe.

We'll pause here to give you time to re-hinge your jaw.

"The Early Show" was the perfect venue for a discussion about the "Survivor" cast's racial divide -- on-air talent for the CBS News program having been carefully selected nearly four years ago when "Early Show" was relaunched to include White Guy Father Figure Harry Smith, African American Chick Rene Syler, Asian American Chick Julie Chen and White Chick Hannah Storm.

About 15 minutes before the interview, "The Early Show's" ethnically diverse On-Air Gang took it outside the studio to see what the Common Folk thought of the shocking development:

"Now I'm just going to take this out into the crowd for a second because, the big twist . . . they're going to divide the tribes into race this time," Smith told the ethnically diverse gathering of Common Folk. Smith sought out one member of the Common Folk to speak for the crowd. He zoomed in on -- a white guy.

"What's your reaction to that?" Smith asked White Guy.

"Should be pretty interesting," White Guy responded.

So would feeding Christians to the lions be "pretty interesting", but should it be televised? Well, if we're talking about James Dobson and Randall Terry and their ilk, maybe. But I digress

Is this the worst television idea you've heard since Anna Nicole Smith got her own reality show, or what? Sure, let's take a high-ratings show and pit five white people against the marauding hordes. That'll foster a feeling of "out of many, one people", right? And given Burnett's history, I don't expect the editing to be significantly different from what we've seen for the last 12 seasons. Merge or no merge, this could get ugly.

Trivial Nonsense Friday: Friday Cat Blogging

Jenny: The world's most obedient, well-behaved cat.

jeudi 24 août 2006

Desperate Soundbites

Jon Stewart deconstructs it all for you. But first, put down the coffee.

Sins of the Father, or Payback's a Bitch

Sidney Blumenthal:

But Bush is trapped in a self-generated dynamic that eerily recalls the centrifugal forces that spun apart his father's presidency. George H.W. Bush, a World War II fighter pilot, was unfairly said by the media to suffer from "the wimp factor," "emasculated by the office of vice president," according to a notorious Newsweek cover story in 1987. (George W., acting as enforcer, his then favorite role, cut Newsweek's reporters off from further access.) It was not until the Gulf War that the public became convinced that the elder Bush was a strong leader and not the wimp he was stereotypically depicted as. But then almost immediately afterward came a recession. Bush's feeble response was not seen as merely an expression of typical Republican policy but as a profound character flaw. If Bush was strong, why didn't he solve the problem? The public concluded he was indifferent, and its view of him curdled into anger. Outdoing the father by subduing "the wimp factor," the son has not grasped that it was the father's presumed strength and not his weakness that undid him in the end.

President Bush's staggering mismanagement of the Iraqi occupation, making the old colonial "savage wars of peace" appear by comparison as case studies for modern business schools of benign competence, has until recently served his purpose of seeming to defy the elements of chaos he himself has aroused. By stringing every threat together into an immense plot that justifies a global war on terrorism, however, he has ultimately made himself hostage to any part of the convoluted story line that goes haywire.

Because Bush has told the public that Iraq is central to the war on terror, the worse things go in Iraq, the more the public thinks the war on terror is going badly. Asked at his press conference what invading Iraq had to do with Sept. 11, Bush seemed so dumbfounded that at first he answered directly. "Nothing," he said, before sliding into a falsely aggrieved self-defense -- "except for it's part of -- and nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack."

Asked about sectarian violence in Iraq, Bush's voice suddenly went passive. "You know, I hear a lot of talk about civil war." Indeed, he might have heard it from his top generals, John Abizaid and Peter Pace, who testified before the Senate on Aug. 3, seriously off-message from Bush's P.R. campaign of relentlessly stressing "victory." As Abizaid said, "Sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen it."

All the stopgap strategies have failed to halt it -- eliminating Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, mobilizing the civil action teams, building up the police, concentrating forces in Baghdad. Asked three times what his strategy is, or whether he has a new one, Bush tried to fend off the question with words like "dreams" and "democratic society." "That's the strategy," he said. Then Bush confused having a strategy with being in Iraq. "Now, if you say, are you going to change your strategic objective," he struggled to explain, "it means you're leaving before the mission is complete." Finally, as always, he asserted that if the United States withdrew, "the enemy would follow us here," forgetting that London is "here." Or is it? "Here" dissolved into abstraction, too.

Bush is now reduced to just making it up as he goes along. Yesterday, he likened terrorists to a lost puppy:

"Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom," Bush said Wednesday.
"If we leave before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will follow us home,"

Guess what, George. Your mission has already created a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from us. It's too late. Face it, George. You fucked up. Big-time. And all the petulant news conferences in the world won't change that.

Here we go again

I guess they're relying on the 55% of idiots who approve of Bush's actions on terrorism, rather than the sentient beings who have heard this song before:

Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Some policy makers have accused intelligence agencies of playing down Iran’s role in Hezbollah’s recent attacks against Israel and overestimating the time it would take for Iran to build a nuclear weapon.

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks, surfaced in a Congressional report about Iran released Wednesday. They echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.

The criticisms reflect the views of some officials inside the White House and the Pentagon who advocated going to war with Iraq and now are pressing for confronting Iran directly over its nuclear program and ties to terrorism, say officials with knowledge of the debate.

The dissonance is surfacing just as the intelligence agencies are overhauling their procedures to prevent a repeat of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate — the faulty assessment that in part set the United States on the path to war with Iraq.

The new report, from the House Intelligence Committee, led by Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, portrayed Iran as a growing threat and criticized American spy agencies for cautious assessments about Iran’s weapons programs. “Intelligence community managers and analysts must provide their best analytical judgments about Iranian W.M.D. programs and not shy away from provocative conclusions or bury disagreements in consensus assessments,” the report said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction like nuclear arms.

Some policy makers also said they were displeased that American spy agencies were playing down intelligence reports — including some from the Israeli government — of extensive contacts recently between Hezbollah and members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. “The people in the community are unwilling to make judgment calls and don’t know how to link anything together,” one senior United States official said.

“We’re not in a court of law,” he said. “When they say there is ‘no evidence,’ you have to ask them what they mean, what is the meaning of the term ‘evidence’?”

The criticisms do not appear to be focused on any particular agency, like the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency or the State Department’s intelligence bureau, which sometimes differ in their views.

Officials from across the government — including from within the Bush administration, Congress and American intelligence agencies — spoke for this article on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a debate over classified intelligence information. Some officials said that given all that had happened over the last four years, it was only appropriate that the intelligence agencies took care to avoid going down the same path that led the United States to war with Iraq.

I don't claim to know for certain that Iran isn't a bigger threat than intelligence estimates indicate. But the Administration chose to blow its credibility on Iraq, and right now it has absolutely none to convince me that this isn't just the next chapter in the neocon dream world.

Why I hate conventional politicians: Exhibit A

Last night I went to a candidates' forum on Iraq, sponsored by Bergen Grassroots, the local Democracy for America chapter.

As you already know, I have a serious problem with the Democratic candidate for our Congressional seat -- not because he's a bad guy, but because he's weak. He has absolutely no "presence" whatsoever, no connection with people when he speaks, no ability to think on his feat, no willingness to give a straight answer to a question, and seemingly, no desire to win.

I live in the kind of Republican district that used to be called "Rockefeller Republican." Marge Roukema, who probably wouldn't be allowed in the Republican Party anymore, served this district in Congress for 25 years. I suspect that many people here, too busy with shlepping their kids back and forth, aren't even aware that when Marge retired, they elected the most foul kind of Christofascist Zombie.

Scott Garrett is awful, but the candidacy of Paul Aronsohn insults my intelligence. It insults my intelligence because I am supposed to believe that this corporatist namedropper, whose web site is chockablock of him shaking hands with politicians, is going to represent my interests in Congress. When asked whether he'll represent Pfizer, his former employer, or constituents in Congress, he won't give an answer. When confronted about net neutrality in the context of having the telecom industry's leading lobbyist as a campaign advisor, he goes on the attack. Aronsohn's theme is "We have to move past pointing fingers."

At least I KNOW that Scott Garrett is going to screw me over. Aronsohn is going to talk nicely, reassure me that he's on my team, and then when my back is turned, he'll pocket the corporate cash and THEN screw me over.

I recognize how important it is to take the House this year. I recognize the argument for being a "good soldier." But that acknowledged, I vowed in November 2004, after John Kerry left Ohio with $14 million in leftover campaign cash and votes still uncounted, and went home, that I would never, ever, ever again be a "good soldier" and vote for a pussy-ass candidate who DOES NOT WANT TO WIN.

And I see nothing from Paul Aronsohn indicating that he has the fire in the belly to run against Republicans.

If he gets flustered and angry when I ask him tough questions, what on earth is this guy going to do when Scott Garrett gets hold of him?

I WANT Aronsohn to not be the cigar store Indian that I think he is. I WANT to be able to vote for him. But so far, there's just no there there. So it's against this dilemma that I went to this candidates' forum.

The panel consisted of 12th District Rep. Rush Holt, 9th District Rep. Steve Rothman, and Aronsohn.

Holt favors a phased withdrawal from Iraq beginning immediately. Rothman favors a phased withdrawal beginning in November. Aronsohn favors a phased withdrawal "beginning by the end of the year."

Of the three of these nimrods, Holt was the least offensive. The man is no speaker, but he gets points from me for at least trying to address the voting machine issue. And he was at least prepared with an impressive breakdown of what the money being spent every day in Iraq could pay for.

After you get past Holt, all bets are off. This was a testy, restive, angry crowd of about 100 people. With the exception of a few well-placed Aronsohn shills sprinkled through the crowd, this was a group tired of sellout Democrats, tired of war without end, tired of having no representation. This was a group that wants Action-With-A-Capital-A, not promises. This was a group that wants a plan, not bullshit. And this was a group that didn't get what it was looking for.

The standard line about Democratic ineffectiveness is "What can they do? They're out of power." This line is parrotted by everyone from Randi Rhodes to, well, Steve Rothman. Rothman, becoming angrier and more sarcastic with every question, repreated this mantra over and over and over again: "With a Democratic majority, we'll do x, y, and z." That's an awfully big leap of faith to ask us, when so many Democrats have just rolled over for this Administration for the last five years. The message from this party is, "When you can't win, don't try." Once you get past John Conyers, who bravely soldiers on, holding his basement hearings, guys like Steve Rothman are biding their time, waiting till they are guaranteed a win to do what's right.

And we're supposed to elect representatives who get their motivational philosophy from Homer Simpson:

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

Trying is the first step towards failure.

I want to share something with you -- the three sentences that will get you through life. Number one, "Cover for me." Number two, "Oh, good idea, boss." Number three, "It was like that when I got here."

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.

By this logic, the Mets should only show up to play when the Pittsburgh Pirates are in town sitting all their regulars and playing a team full of Triple-A callups.

Now THAT'S the kind of strategy that makes you want to go out and make phone calls, doesn't it?

If you're wondering why I haven't said much about the candidate for my own district, it's that there's nothing much to say. Paul Aronsohn sat between Holt and Rothman looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else. Aside from nodding like a bobblehead doll whenever support for Israel was mentioned, he used every opportunity to magnanimously hand the microphone off to Holt or Rothman. The one direct question he answered was one about Airbus receiving Katrina reconstruction money to build a plant in Louisiana to build fighter jets for the Iraq war. And his answer was stock Aronsohn: "I don't know about that."

At that point, I put my hands to my head to keep it from exploding and muttered, "I'm really trying here, guy, but you gotta help me out...you gotta give me something to work with."

Paul Aronsohn is exactly the reason why Rothman's call of "Just make us a majority and we'll do you proud" rings hollow. Aronsohn is clearly already looking to his next government position. It seems he can't be bothered running a real campaign. He can't be bothered coming up with positions on the issues that are tenable. The Aronsohn boilerplate consists of two concepts: "Let's move on and not point fingers" and "I don't kknow about that."

The attendees at this forum want accountability as well as repairs to the mess the Bush Administration and their Congressional lackeys have made of this country. We are currently being represented by a bunch of guys who don't even TRY -- and now they've given me yet another one are they're telling me he's my only hope.

If that's the case, then hope is already gone.