New England Flooding May 2006

Here.

After the Rains Came & Went

Sounds Like A Plan!

Froomkin:

Stratton of the Orlando Sentinel summarizes Bush's comments on the upcoming hurricane season: "Bush said he worried about the thousands of Gulf Coast residents now living in trailers. 'Let's just pray,' he said, 'there is no hurricane heading that way.'"

A Couple of Things

From the Boston Globe (by James Carroll) comes some insight on the caliber of great minds who hold the reins of power:

The disaster in Iraq both recapitulates American mistakes of the past and worsens them immeasurably.

Let's begin with Rumsfeld himself. In 1975, he was Gerald Ford's secretary of defense when the USS Mayaguez was seized off Cambodia by the newly empowered Khmer Rouge, whose ascendance followed the destabilizing US ''incursion." The American crew of 38 was captured.

Rumsfeld shaped the response -- which was to ignore diplomacy, begin bombing a Cambodian port city, and dispatch a large force of Marines to rescue the crew. Bad moves based on bad intelligence. While untold Cambodian civilians were bombed, 40 American rescuers were killed in an attack on an island where the crew was thought to be held. In fact, the American sailors had already been released unharmed and set adrift on a Thai fishing vessel. The Mayaguez affair was a dress rehearsal for Rumsfeld's war in Iraq.

How did this man ever get the job of Secretary of War anyway? (Yes, I know it's Secretary of Defense, but it doesn't apply in this administration, with its focus on "pre-emptive" strikes against "enemies" that are made of straw, but bleed like you and me.)

And from the NYT comes this unsurprising news:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

And this guy still says indignantly that naturally war was the last thing he wanted.

I don't believe him. And I don't see how anyone could at this juncture. As much as I'd like to at least accept the validity of the opinions of the right-wing in this country, what I've found in the last three to four years as things spiral ever more out of control and democracy itself as its meant to be has been abolished in the USA, I find I cannot even begin to understand how anyone can defend the positions of the people who currently hold office (my contempt for elected officials extends to a good many Democrats too, fwiw).

How did we ever get this far out of control?

Jerry Stahl knows a thing or two

In this piece for LA Weekly, he writes about James Frey.

(Jerry Stahl is my all-time favorite CSI scenarist. He writes the most twisted episodes the series can boast, bless his heart.)

The 50 Most Loathsome Americans

The Beast makes several good points. (disclaimer: I don't fully agree with the Beast, but he makes some good points; also, the Beast is obviously a Red Sox fan)

Of Cats and Cameras

I owe someone a tip of the link for this, but I've no idea who (sorry).

Sing it with me --

"there's got to be ..." "... a morning af-ter ..."

Happy New Year.

And may God help us all ...

NYT headline: In A Quiet Vacation, the President Readies for an Ambitious Agenda.

According to Stephen Hadley the regime has "listened to our critics and are already pursuing many of their proposals" which would be more reassuring if Bush's weekly radio address had not included delusions like this:

• after the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, whose results are still in flux, the country was on its way to "an inclusive, unified and lasting democracy."

The truth is, we've replaced a secular government with a theocracy of religious extremists who hate our guts. Way to go, there. You can almost smell the crude oil they want to give us for all our good deeds, can't you?

• On the economic front he insisted that, even with tax cuts, his government was "staying on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009," but he made no mention of the fact that his Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, asked Congress on Thursday to raise the debt limit again, the fourth time in Mr. Bush's presidency, so that the government can borrow more money, largely for increases in military and entitlement programs.

Speaking on a strictly personal level here, as I try my damnedest to stay afloat as a member of the lower middle class (but find myself sinking steadily under a rising tide of increased prices without anything extra coming in), I would not trust these people to oversee a piggy bank. & what they're doing to our economy should be considered as criminal, in its own way, as their war crimes against Iraq.

But hey, at least there isn't anything about eviscerating Social Security on his current agenda ...

I, Spy

(well, no, not me, but the regime holding the reins of power in my country, yes, they spy)

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Government records show that the Bush administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

Gosh, that's kind of a bad sign when you can't get a rubber-stamp court to give you permission. I doubt they ever asked themselves why this was, of course. Stay the course & all that...

Wonder how come it was so tough to get those warrants?

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show. Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote.

Oh.

(Raw Story link via DU. Saddest part is, the story isn't even new.)

Friday Cat Bloggin'

Miss Keesa.

The Lighter Side

• "you think you're so tough 'cause you're bigger than me! I'll show you!"
• Dali's Persistence of Vision, rendered in Silly Putty: Persistence of Putty
  
• Panda Cam!!!
  

Third World Nation Watch

Our government continues to cover itself with glory in its handling of the aftermath of Katrina.

(See also this and this, which can surely be filed under "conservatism, compassionate.")

Jumpin' Cats!

As the subject line says ...

The cat Jessica, my own feline companion, says that these cats are show-offs, obviously suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome. She also says that she could do that sort of thing if she wanted to, but she doesn't, so that's that.

Worst. President. Ever.

This chap in the Australian has some pithy words.

George's response to 9/II? He invades Afghanistan to terminate with extreme prejudice bin Laden and punish the Taliban. Bin who? He hasn't bin seen lately. The Taliban? They've withdrawn a few kilometres and the war lords, whose brutality and corruption made the Taliban welcome in the first place, are now back in the saddle. They're showing their gratitude to George by once more producing 80 per cent of the world's heroin.

Confusing Iraq with Iran (or possibly Syria) and confusing Saddam Hussein with bin Laden, George demolishes pretty much an entire nation. In further confusion, he mistakes palm trees for nuclear missiles and camels and donkeys for biological and chemical weapons. This leads to the deaths of 100,000 innocent Iraqis who had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center. George's war also involves the deaths of 2000 young Americans and tips the Iraqis into a civil war that will go on and bloodily on for decades. George further destabilises the world's most dangerous region and persuades a new generation to choose suicide bombing as a career.

Via The Smirking Chimp.

Backing In

So it's off to the post-season for another year, but somehow it doesn't seem like quite that big a deal. The fact that the Sox not only make it to the playoffs via the wildcard, but also that it didn't matter what they did today once the Indians lost leaves me with a sort of "yeahhhhhh, so what" feeling.

Frankly, they don't deserve to be in the playoffs this year. With a few exceptions (Ortiz, Wakefield, Manny when he feels like it), they've played indifferently for much of the season, they've thrown away games that the kids playing kickball over at the playground could have won, and there have been too many moments where Terry Francona seems to have been posessed body and soul by the malignant spectre of Grady Little.

Bleah.

So the baseball season winds down, and once the post-season is over, we'll have to figure out something else to do with ourselves in the evening besides watching the games and making snarky comments about the quality of play via AIM. I dont watch football, myself, since I don't really understand what's happening -- but since Ms Zhakora has pointed out that certain members of the Patriots posess outstanding gluteal development, I may be forced to reconsider.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in the Washington Post

Chavez doesn't exactly mince words:

This [the Bush] administration invaded Iraq. According to Pope John Paul II, it is an illegal war, an immoral war, a terrorist war. The U.S. has bombarded entire cities, used chemical weapons and napalm, killed women, children and thousands of soldiers. That's terrorism.

In Venezuela they fostered a coup d'etat [in 2002] manufactured by the CIA . . . Recently,ReverendRobertson called for my assassination. This is a terrorist attack, according to international law. In Miami, on a daily basis, people on TV shows are calling for my assassination. This is terrorism.

This [present U.S.] government is a threat to humanity. I have confidence that the American people will save humanity from this government -- they will not allow it to [continue to] violate human rights and to invade countries.

It's a very damning interview.

SAG news

Alan Rosenberg has been elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is married to one of my favorite actors, Marg Helgenberger (under-utilized but still fantastic on the monster hit CSI, but who absolutely shone on the shamefully under-appreciated China Beach). Good for him, I hope he does well.

The Signs, They're A'Changin'

Antiwar protest sign: Make Levees, Not War.

Just a blog post

It's been nearly impossible to post lately, for a lot of reasons (many of them related to a lass named Katrina, but not limited thereto).
I shall be ordering oil today, since the big oil people will be once again using natural disaster in the gulf region to kill off the middle class by price gouging. As Hurricane Rita does her thing down in Louisiana and Texas, the big oil people will be wreaking even more damage across the rest of the land. We have this to look forward to. Bush will be leading the vanguard from his position on the front lines – Northern Command in Colorado Springs.
Rumor has it that he's back on the bottle, due to the grief he feels over every death in Iraq, etc etc. The idea that he feels grief is certainly a novel one, and not one that holds up under any sort of scrutiny. If it is grief he feels, however, I would say it is the grief, coupled with frustration, felt toward his tanking poll numbers & the growing intransigence of even his own party members. My God, how dare they? Don't they know he must cement his place in American history as the best of the best? Eviscerating Social Security is a tough job, he can't do it alone. Don't they realize that? Since he is not someone who takes being thwarted well, toddler tantrums are waiting in the wings, most recently evidenced by his linking the Osama crowd (those nasty BAD terrorists) with the even-more-devastating Hurricane Katrina (nasty BAD weather). Both BAD, you see. BAD BAD. To the mind of a 4 year old, this is all the link necessary. (This also can easily explain away the illegal invasion of Iraq in terms that might more accurately convey why we're doing what we're doing, than whatever the current justification for the invasion is this week.)