Oh. My. God.
Listen to this interview with the Mayor of New Orleans. Listen to it right now.
He is pissed. He is outraged. He is full of answers about what must be done, and condemnations that it is not being done.
It is an extraordinary interview with a politician who could not care less about politics right now.
It needs to be heard. Let people hear it. Forward it along. It is the most important thing I have heard in a long time.
Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman via David Weinberger.
It's a crying shame that we're supposed to be impressed with Dubya ending his vacation 2 days early.
It's a crying shame that we're supposed to be impressed with his empty words and platitudes that the NY Times rightly skewers.
It's a crying shame that funding was repeatedly cut for Gulf Coast flood management tactics.
And that the National Guard is depleted because they're over in Iraq.
It's a crying shame what those people are enduring right now.
And no matter what you feel about the government, about the President, about red states and blue states, about the South whatever: it will be a crying shame if you do nothing to help.
Just help.
And if you work for a big company, like GM or HP, donate via their matching program. And if you work for a big company that doesn't have a matching program...ask them why the hell not!?
Just help.
I don't know about you, but I am Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled by those on the right who dare to equate disagreement with anti-Americanism, anti-patriotism, hell, terrorism!
It use to be more generic and almost subtle. It's getting specific and overt. And I'm sick of it.
What's the latest? Check it out in the extended entry.
So, what was the generic and subtle?
People like Karen Hughes saying that those who marched for a woman's right to choose didn't value life, sort of like the terrorists.
Or implying that when the Spanish ousted their incumbent they were letting the terrorists win.
You know, impugning whole groups of faceless people.
But now, they've upped the ante.
Have you heard about the bumper sticker they're selling down South?
Let me fill you in. It says:
"Kerry is Bin-Laden's Man; President Bush is Mine"
Appalled yet?
Now, we have radio talk show host Neil Boortz saying:
"I'm just singling out two different groups of people right now that present a threat to this country, and frankly I just cannot tell you which one presents the greater threat. One group of people: Osama bin Laden and his Islamic terrorists. The Islamic jihadists. The other group of people: those of you who would vote for John Kerry."
Outraged yet?
That's you they're talking about. A regular, patriotic American, planning to do your civic duty and vote.
Just like my "Compassionate Conservative" encounter, some people seem to think that if you disagree with them on a presidential candidate, it is open season to question more than your intelligence or judgment skills, but also your basic character, morals, patriotism etc.
Hey, I understand the feeling. I may have my moments where I think that right-wingers must not care very much about those less fortunate, that they're selfish, or still mired in old discriminatory ways of thinking.
But I never think that means they'd like a bunch of innocent people blown up.
I mean come one, aren't there limits? Apparently NOT to people like Neil Boortz.
Well, I'm:
Disgusted at their resorting to cheap and vicious demonization of the opposition when they don't have an actual logical argument
Outraged that they think it's okay to equate dissent with terrorism
and
Appalled that President Bush himself doesn't stick to merely a "spirited campaign" rather than a slanderous one, and call off these attack dogs.
And if you find yourself D.O.A., then help do everything you can do make Bush's re-election hopes D.O.A. too.
Start here
This post was hacked and taken over by an evil spammer.
While I cannot recreate my original post, it went something like this:
Renew the assault weapons ban like you promised to, President Bush.
I'm only keeping the entry here at all because there was an interesting discussion in the Comments about it.
Sorry.
One of the more controversial allegations in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" is that the White House authorized a flight out of the US carrying over a hundred Saudi nationals, including members of the Bin Laden family. Moore certainly isn't the first journalist to cover this story. I first read about it in a piece in Rolling Stone magazine over a year ago.
But this story has always had personal resonance for me, as one of the many people who was stranded far from home on 9/11 and waited for days to get back.
A story out of Iraq today only bolsters the argument that something quite unacceptable happened when they let those flights go.
If you weren't already Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled (and I know most of you were!) then read more about it in the extended entry:
The NY Times story out of Iraq is a simple, and not too surprising, one. They now believe that some of Saddam Hussein's extended family are the ones financing and supporting the insurgency in Iraq.
So, even though Saddam had no compunction about executing family members who displeased him, other family members are more than happy to continue to support him. The point is not that anyone who's related to a criminal must be a criminal. The point is only that family ties are typically strong, and that if nothing else the family information highway is usually two-way and pretty efficient. Don't you know what's up with some of your family members, even if you haven't seen them in years?
And that's what seems so crazy about the willingness of our government to let not only a bunch of Saudis leave the country, but a bunch of Bin Ladens too. It's a very amusing sequence in the Moore film when he shows clips from Dragnet, with Joe Friday interviewing family members of missing suspects. But the humor is based on a sense of the absurd. You really can't help thinking: "What were they thinking?!"
Meanwhile they have detained hundreds of people since 9/11...no charges and no trials...most of them, I'm sure, with less connection to the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks than that plane-load of people.
I don't claim to know what they were thinking. But I do know that I sat alone in a hotel room in Manhattan for 4 extra days, calling American Airlines and logging on to www.aa.com repeatedly, as flight after flight got scheduled than cancelled. I do know I ended up taking a $400 cab ride to Philadelphia at 4am to catch a flight out of there, because continued bomb threats at JFK and La Guardia was making it impossible to get out of there unless you went and camped out there.
I do know I'm:
Disgusted at the double-standard
Outraged at the cover-up and
Appalled at the dereliction of duty to investigate promptly and impartially all avenues
And if you're also D.O.A., then do everything you can to make sure Bush's re-election hopes are D.O.A. as well.
This entry was hacked and hijacked by an evil spammer. While I cannot recreate the brilliant commentary that I'm sure accompanied this post, there is a really appalling example of Pentagon stonewalling on Abu Ghraib found in the extended entry:
Pentagon hinders Abu Ghraib probe
If the Pentagon higher-ups have nothing to hide in the Abu Ghraib investigation, why are they stonewalling?
"The Pentagon has provided many documents but others have not yet been handed over. For example, it has not given Congress copies of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports related to Iraq - despite assurances from Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, two months ago that it would do so. Last week Mr Warner expressed his dismay at the Pentagon's lack of co-operation."
"'Congress must be given the tools, the reports with which to do its proper oversight,' he said. 'There's been a clear intent and desire to provide Congress such reports,' Larry Di Rita, Pentagon spokesman said yesterday. 'It's been a more challenging process than. . . I think anybody had an appreciation for.'"
"Another Pentagon official said the military needs to collect the reports from commanders in the field, which is a complicated process in a war zone. When asked why the Pentagon had not simply asked the ICRC to provide Congress with the reports directly, Mr Di Rita replied: 'I'll mark that down - I appreciate being educated.'"
-- Geraldine Sealey
[10:55 PDT, July 2, 2004]
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Don't shoot me, I know the source is the Drudge Report, so we'll have to wait and see if it's true, but it looks like only Republican presidents will be allowed to speak at Reagan's state funeral.
According to Drudge, Bush I and Bush II will both be delivering eulogies, but Clinton & Carter have been shut out. (For anyone keeping score, current President Clinton did speak at Nixon's funeral, and no former President did, including Ford, Nixon's Vice President.)
Now I have a couple of thoughts here:
1. First thought is the knee-jerk disgust that the funeral, paid for by tax payer dollars, is going to turn into one long Republican commercial, or even worse, a brazen display of the Bush Dynasty at work.
2. The Drudge Report isn't exactly reliable, and he seems to focus on Clinton being miffed about the snub. So it's a clever attempt to make Clinton seem like the one politicizing the funeral.
If you care to hold your nose and look at the Drudge Report item, here it is.
I could throw up!
After all the noble words about suspending overt political activities this week in a show of respect to Ronald reagan and his family, guess who just couldn't hold himself back for even 2 days?
That's correct...our President...who's acting more like a desperate, long-shot challenger than a sitting, incumbent "war president."
First the attack ads went right back on the air (and I'm sure by now you may have heard that the Washington Post has calculated that 75% of Bush ads are negative vs 75% of Kerry's positive ads.)
Then, as Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" reported, Newt Gingrich theorized on air that Reagan would have approved of Bush's handling of Iraq! Well, we can't KNOW of course, but I'm willing to say that, on the other hand, Reagan surely didn't approve of Bush's position on stem cell research.
Now, if you go to the georgewbush.com campaign web site, you are automatically redirected to a "tribute" page about Reagan.
That's not mixing overt politicism with memorializing Reagan, not at all.
Seriously, it's all a little sick-making, don't you think?
I'm feeling Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled again.
There seems to be a trend of late in our government to allow clearly self-interested folks to investigate their own alleged wrong-doings. And elected representatives and the media ought to start doing some more rabble rousing about it.
What am I talking about?
Well, what brought it up today was a story in the NY Times about the Pentagon's investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. I'm not sure how you can call it an effective instigation when one of their investigators states:
"The secretary [Rumsefeld] is an honorable man, who'd never condone this type of activity. This was not a tone set by the secretary."
Oh, we know that? Well, that makes your investigation a lot shorter and easier (and more likely to be approved by your boss) then huh?
And this is just part of the regular M.O. for some of these guys, dating back to when it was Bush Sr.'s appointees who looked into Bush Jr.'s questionable stock sales at Harken Energy and decided there was nothing to investigate. It's no different than Arnold saying he'll hire people to investigate Grope-gate, then quietly abandoning that promise...with little attention from the "liberal" media, I might add.
And it's as irksome as Rumsfeld dismissing those who would look into the recent sweetheart deal for Boeing and Cheney doing the same for those wondering about Halliburton and its recent no-bid contract win.
I am Disgusted, Outraged and Appalled at this pattern of going around the law and then acting as though above the law.
One more reason to render Bush's re-election hopes Dead On Arrival.
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White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: May 19, 2004
WASHINGTON, May 18 — Like many of its predecessors, the Bush White House has used the machinery of government to promote the re-election of the president by awarding federal grants to strategically important states. But in a twist this election season, many administration officials are taking credit for spreading largess through programs that President Bush tried to eliminate or to cut sharply.
For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million.
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The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination.
Tommy G. Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, announced recently that the administration was awarding $11.7 million in grants to help 30 states plan and provide coverage for people without health insurance. Mr. Bush had proposed ending the program in each of the last three years.
The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.
Whether they involve programs Mr. Bush supported or not, the grant announcements illustrate how the administration blends politics and policy, blurring the distinction between official business and campaign-related activities.
In recent weeks, administration officials have fanned out around the country. Within a 48-hour period this month, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was in Wisconsin and Illinois, doling out federal aid to poor neighborhoods. Anthony J. Principi, the secretary of veterans affairs, was in Las Vegas to announce plans for a new veterans hospital. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham was in South Carolina to announce a new national research laboratory. And a top transportation official was in Portland, Me., awarding a $13 million grant to the city's airport.
In some cases, overtly political appearances are piggybacked onto such trips. Earlier this month, Mr. Principi was in Florida announcing plans for another veterans hospital, in Orlando, with a side trip to Tampa to kick off a national coalition of veterans supporting the re-election of Mr. Bush.
A few days earlier, while traveling to Marco Island, Fla., on official business, Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans stopped in Daytona Beach to attend a large prayer meeting, where he praised Mr. Bush as "a leader you can trust 100 percent of the time."
The combination of official business and politics is neither illegal nor unusual in an election year, though Bush administration officials were reluctant to provide details. In fact, the Bush administration is using techniques refined by President Bill Clinton. The difference is that in the Clinton years the White House was often trying to add and expand domestic programs, not cut them.
The government has byzantine rules for documenting mixed official and political travel. The goal is to ensure that the campaign or some other political group pays for parts of a trip that are purely political.
But as the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, has said, "it is often impossible to neatly categorize travel as either purely business or purely political."
Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for Mr. Evans, said the Republican National Committee paid for the commerce secretary's stop in Daytona Beach on May 6. A local newspaper, The News-Journal, said the prayer meeting there "evolved into a rousing Republican political rally."
The contrast between politics and policy is particularly striking when the administration takes credit for spending money appropriated by Congress against the president's wishes.
In April, Secretary Thompson announced that the administration was awarding $3.1 million in grants to improve health care in rural areas of Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico and New York. He did not mention that the administration was trying to cut the same rural health program by 72 percent, to $11.1 million next year, from $39.6 million.
Mr. Thompson likewise recently boasted that the administration was awarding $16 million to 11 universities to train blacks and Hispanic Americans as doctors, dentists and pharmacists. But at the same time, the administration was urging Congress to abolish the program, on the ground that "private and corporate entities" could pay for training.
Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, has sent a memorandum to Cabinet officers saying they must carefully allocate travel costs between the government and the campaign.
"There is considerable room for discretion in determining whether an event giving rise to an expense is political or official," Mr. Gonzales wrote. Ultimately, he said, the decision depends on the facts of each case.
Interior Department lawyers said that Secretary Gale A. Norton had made eight entirely political trips and 17 trips combining official business with political activity, for which the government was reimbursed. The political sponsor typically pays a share of the costs, based on the amount of time spent on political activity, said Timothy S. Elliott, a lawyer at the department.
Last month, on a trip to Alaska, Ms. Norton attended two fund-raisers, in Juneau and Anchorage. "It's always beneficial to have members of the cabinet at these events," said Randy Ruedrich, chairman of the Republican Party of Alaska.
A trip to Minneapolis by Education Secretary Rod Paige shows a similar mix. John M. Gibbons, a spokesman for the secretary, said Mr. Paige went to a Republican fund-raiser there on Feb. 17, then visited schools the next day.
On March 13, Mr. Paige made a political trip to Orlando for a Republican dinner. He was back in Florida for a Bush-Cheney fund-raiser in Fort Lauderdale on March 26 and for the annual conference of the National School Boards Association, in Orlando, on March 28-29.
Likewise, Anthony T. Jewell, a spokesman for Mr. Thompson, said the health secretary attended a Republican fund-raiser on April 22 while visiting Detroit to promote organ donation.
The precedents for such activity run deep. Phillip M. Caplan, who was a special assistant to President Clinton, said the Clinton White House had a weekly conference call with chiefs of staff at Cabinet departments.
"We would tell officials, for example, that the president will be in Ohio on the 27th of this month, so you should scour the agency, and if you have something coming up in Ohio, let us know," Mr. Caplan recalled. "The announcement of grants was timed to coincide with the president's visit. The goal was to maximize the credit and visibility for the president."
Scott M. Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said: "The law sets forth clear guidelines as to how costs should be allocated. We adhere to the guidelines. We pay travel and other costs for government officials participating in political events."
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Remember my suggested campaign slogan?
Make Bush's re-election chances D.O.A. if you're:
Disgusted with the Deception
Outraged at the Obfuscation
and
Appalled at the arrogance!
Well here's one for the record books!
The Bush Administration's unbelievable nerve to question whether Kerry's war service was truly quite as heroic as reported! To question whether his 1st Purple Heart was for a really serious injury!
They are honestly trying to turn his record of service and sacrifice into a liability, rather than an advantage. This, from a group of men who did not serve and did just about everything they could do to avoid it.
Here's a great link to just crystallize the issue for you:
Take a look at Kerry request to be sent to Vietnam and Bush's request NOT to go.
It doesn't get much simpler than this
Slogan #1: Bush's re-election candidacy is D.O.A.
If you are Disgusted with the Deception
If you are Outraged over the Obfuscation (So, sue me, I'm an X-Files geek.)
If you are Appalled at the Arrogance
Then render Bush's re-election hopes D.O.A.
Slogan #2: Stop Mothra's attack on America
America is a nation the world should admire and aspire to emulate...not a nation they fear and loathe.
America is a nation founded on the principle of liberty...not the steady erosion of civil liberties.
America is a nation founded on the principle of freedom to practice one's religion, but the clear separation of church and state...not the idea that religious beliefs dictate public policy.
America is a nation founded on the principle of equality for all...not just for the privileged few.
America is not supposed to be the world's enemy. America is not supposed to be run by a secretive cabal of elitists.
America is supposed to be the nation of white hats, of good guys, of straight-shooters, of the helping hand and boundless optimism.
Bush and his crew are tearing away at the very fabric of America...and as a friend of mine just pointed out, that makes Bush a bit like our own Mothra!
So, stop Mothra, before he makes his way to our nice winter sweaters!
Any votes to pass these on to the DNC?