Dog days of August… 29 August 2007
Posted by marisacat in The Battle for New Orleans.trackback
New Orleans – October – 2005
… hard to look back.
Bill Quigley on 10 things learned:
Seven. Government will help businesses first and second and third, and if there is anything left, maybe fourth.
Who is in charge of government before the disaster? Governments will look to privatize the public sector –housing, health, education, transportation, every system after a disaster. That was what they wanted before the disaster, so the disaster offers them an opportunity to move their plans into action.
Corporations see disasters as opportunities. They look for valuable land that poor people were living on before the disaster. They decide that there is a better economic use for that land. Then they will push the government to come up with some excuse to take the land for other uses.
You will quickly see that those with power and money before the disaster end up with more power and more money after the disaster. You will see that 98% of the money distributed in a disaster ends up enriching corporations. Our most colorful example is the blue tarps that the government put on the roofs of houses after Katrina. The main contractor, Shaw Group, got $175 a square to put on the tarps. The subcontracted the work out to another corporation for $75 a square. The second corporation subcontracted the work out to a third corporation for $30 a square. Who in turn subcontracted it out again to guys who did the work for $2 a square. Two dollars a square for the actual worker is less than 2 percent of what the government paid out –guess who got the money.
Wonder why the Gulf Coast is not fixed up yet? This is not an accident. It is not that the system isn’t working. It is working for the benefit of those who create and fund and manipulate it. Read Naomi Klein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It spells it out in detail.
If government works primarily for corporations before the disaster, after the disaster it will be a hyper corporate-friendly environment.
Well. A big fat bingo on that one!
Nine. A justice-based reconstruction will not be funded.
Money will flow. Charities, churches and governments will send money for charitable help. If your community is trying to create a more just community than the one destroyed by the disaster, there will not be funding for that. If you are trying to make the community fairer for and with the poor, the elderly, and those who lived in unjust circumstances before the disaster –get ready to raise your own funds for your organization.
Funding for charity will come, but funding for justice will not.
We must insist on some transparency and accountability from the non-profits and foundations and others who have raised and spent billions in the names of those in distress. They cannot be allowed to operate like multi-national corporations –they must open their books and involve people in their decision-making.
Solidarity not charity is one of the great demands to come out of Katrina from the Common Ground collective.
Another is “Nothing about us without us is for us” from Peoples Hurricane Relief.
After Katrina, it again became clear that decades of oil development has literally destroyed the natural protections around the gulf coast.
Yet the disaster actually enriched the oil companies who helped cause it, creating their biggest year of profit in some time.
Yet, do you hear the voices of those calling out for the oil corporations to be held accountable for what they have caused? Those voices are small and unfunded. But they, like so many others calling for justice, are out there and will one day be heard.
******************************************
The NO natives are restless and ain’t buying what Georgie was selling.
The medical/industrial/complex strikes again:
ovary removal before menopause without HRT increases risk of dementia. Someday we may discover that not only have we squandered money on modern medical treatements but the cure was worse than the cause.
This is what I love about science reporting:
What do you want to bet that if I look this study up on Pub Med what this sentence actually means in terms of the data is that among the 2,400 who hadn’t had the surgery there were 10 people displaying symptoms of or like Parkinson’s, while in the study of the 2,300 women who’d had the surgery, there were 17 people.
And did they screen for any other factors among these women which could account for this
7 person70% discrepency?I think the dog days of August are relaxing a bit now that Michael Vick is off their tails :)
wilfred…
well I am sure the dead dogs appreciate he needed a high profile DC atty – among all the others – to ensure a tightly worded plea deal…
8)
Wow. MSNBC just said that the students at the high-school in New Orleans Bush spoke at wanted to “heckle and ask questions” but “they were muzzled”.
Disgusting. Bush should go face his critics, even if they’re high school kids.
Now back to Larry Craig and Tucker Carlson’s gay bashing…
I hope Bush at least offered to attend the afternoon Abstinence Only/No Fetus Left Behind class with them. Seems like the least he could do…
HC
Bush went to a charter school in the Ninth Ward.
No one should have shown up, imo. But i saw plenty of adults being nice to him. Just what was on film.
eugene gets the “obnoxious asshole of the week” award.
He studies the 60s for a living. Yay for him.
All of these post-60s clowns: Bowers, Stoller, Martin, thereisnoclue (and sibling), eugene…dry as fucking melba toast. The Melba Toast Brigade.
Chris Matthews is puzzled about why Bush took so long to react.
Matthews doesn’t get it. Bush and his staff didn’t care. They were poor and black. Had they known this would have destroyed his presidency of course they would have gone in earlier.
Buit it never occurred to them that it would because they just don’t talk to people who would have known better. They only talk to red white and racist Amerikkka.
Isn’t there someone studying, say, the 80s, so we know what NOT to do? I’m sure there are plenty of Republicans doing it, but hagiography gets ril stale ril quick.
Bush is such a fool:
Note that he didn’t say that he is a “lifelong reader”. He apparently discovered this “book” thing when he was forced to read My Pet Goat.
He’s definitley making sure that students “stay reading at grade level” – grade 4 level right into college.
I’ve been trying to forget the 80s for 20 years now, kd.
Hey ! I LIKE Melba Toast ! I even named one of my sockpuppets after it !!
Of course, even better is Melba Liston.
Banging my head. More Bush:
Fuck. I just can’t wait until he’s gone. Sheesh.
#13. But you still have to admit that it’s dry as fuck.
I’ve now reached my usable quota of swear words for today.
Well, I’m sure there are plenty of people out there trying to forget the 60s, too. As a bicentennial baby I have no memory of them, of course, and only furtive blips of fear and loathing from my 80s childhood.
btw catnip, your post about the DKos worm attack reads like a breaking newscast from a natural disaster. Highly enjoyable.
HC #5 have just realized the limits of my ghoulishness — I can no longer participate in the political death watch of Craig. He’ll die quickly enough and there’s no need to study all the signs and syptoms that point out that death is near.
What does “pursued as a lifelong reader” have to do with educating children?
HC #5 have just realized the limits of my ghoulishness — I can no longer participate in the political death watch of Craig.
It looks to me like an authoritarian culture self-destructing. Look at it from the outside. On the second anniversary of Katrina, the biggest news stories are a Senator trolling for sex in a public restroom and a high paid athlete executing dogs.
Now imagine yourself an Iraqi. Children with weapons of mass destruction have the power of life and death over you.
My darlings, I hope no one has missed me. I’ve been out gathering information for you.
Apparently, Bush and Cheney’s attack on Iran is coming very soon.
Well, I’ve been predicting an attack for two years now, and pfffft, so take my prediction with a grain of salt.
Here’s some evidence I gathered up for you. I shall spread it at your feet and let you sort through it.
Exhibit A
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3734n6
Exhibit B
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3dgwqk
Exhibit C
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2qvqeb
Exhibit D
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2wnf5y
The Tucker Carlson thing is amusing. Tucker didn’t gay bash someone in a public restroom in Georgetown. The timing is off anyway. He came back in 25 minutes with a friend and knocked the guys had up against a stall THEN went out and brought back a cop and the cop arrested the guy they assaulted.
So many things off about this story.
What happened. Tucker, Abrams and Scarborough were hanging out at the playground. Tucker slipped and mentioned he got propositioned in a bathroom. We don’t really know if this happened or if he just imagined himself getting propositioned. Abrams and Scarborough caught onto the fact that Tucker was putting himself out just a bit too much and started teasing him. Then Tucker made up the story about banging the guys head against the stall.
BTW, Tucker’s still young enough to go to Iraq, where women actually die because they’re afraid to go to the bathrooms and gets raped so they don’t hydrate themselves.
I could write Bush’s address to the nation now:
“Iran has supported terrorism around the world. Iran has backed insurgent fighters killing US troops in Iraq. Iran has sought to acquire nuclear weapons that would destabilise the entire Middle East and threaten world peace.”
All Bush needs–or maybe he doesn’t–is a triggering incident. Or maybe this is just more attempt to shift blame for the Iraq debacle onto the evil Iranians. But for those of us who believed that Iran was the target all along, the nation that both the US and the Israel want to knock down to the bottom rung of the ladder, this is more evidence confirming that a joint aerial/naval attack (along with a blockade of Iranian ports, aimed at strangling its feeble economy) by the United States will come before Bush and Cheney shuffle off to their retirement.
That is, if Bush and Cheney willingly leave office on 21 January 2009. I used to think they would, until Markos Moulitsas absolutely assured us that they would–since I always believe The Opposite of whatever that particular individual tells me, I now wonder if Bush and Cheney aren’t planning on staying just a wee bit longer with their hands on the levers of power.
Larry Craig or no Larry Craig, what are the odds the Democrats are going to deny Bush funding on the war this Fall.
0%?
.000000000000000000000001%?
shorter bush speech:
We have always been at war with Iran.
drawn from the stock speech file, “fill in the blank” folder. Hillary and Romney pre-approved, mass signing event – George P signed as well.
Tweety put Gary Bauer and Frank Gaffney on within 5 minutes of each other.
Real balanced guest list there….
Gaffney thinks we shouldn’t talk about Abu Ghraid because Islamofascists want to kill us.
Jon Soltz got the better of Frank Gaffney. Tweety tried to save Gaffney and Soltz still outdebated him. Then Gaffney tried to fillibuster his way out of it.
You can always tell when a neocon gets beat when he started to fillibuster. It’s a common neocon last ditch tactic.
Wasn’t Soltz the guy at the yearly Kos who got pissed at the soldier who came in his uniform?
btw catnip, your post about the DKos worm attack reads like a breaking newscast from a natural disaster. Highly enjoyable.
Thank you. Must have been the Katrina influence today. :)
Question:
Why wouldn’t the Dems have known that Bush would be coming back with his hand out for $50 billion? Or did they know while hoping nobody else would figure out that all of their caving meant that Bush would be panhandling again? Or something…?
As for Iran, you don’t sell new products in the summer according to Andrew Card. September will be prime time. Season premiere of the New War.
How does Chris Matthews know the Iwo JIma monument used to be a big gay cruising zone?
Porn & Spyware Found on Govt. and School Sites
Here is the NY Times story about the death of Richard Jewell. Apparently, he was diabetic, and he died of a kidney ailment no doubt related to that. A very sad story, a genuine hero made to look like a villain by the incompetent Janet Reno’s Justice Department. He sued a bunch of MSM outlets who defamed him, and most settled quietly rather than go to trial. The one exception was the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whose lawyer actually had the gall to state today that the paper “stands by” its coverage of the matter. Just what is that supposed to mean when a newspaper is so plainly wrong about something? You “stand by” something that is essentially true, even if it contains some errors of fact. Anyway, Jewell’s estate may still go on with the trial, currently scheduled for January. Here’s hoping they win a huge settlement. Jewell’s mother survived him, and I’m sure she could use the money.
TPMmuckraker has a list of this year’s GOP scandals. Heckuva job there, Repubs.
Harry Shearer was interesting on Olbermann. He said that not only didn’t Bush mention Katrina in his State of the Union, Nancy Pelosi didn’t mention it either in her big speech after the elections when they took over control of the House. Not pretty.
What a tragedy. It was so clear from minute one that Jewell did not do it. And I don’t know about elsewhere but out here, everyone could see it.
Some things are just clear.
A good ol’ boy who simply went out to work every day and did his best.
Obama did not mention it/Katrina in his big Christian respnisbility speech a few weeks ago.
If i can find the post I did on that speech will link to it..
Dear Catnip,
1 melba toast round + thin spread of cream cheese + thick spoonful of some tart jam like currant = bliss.
Also lovely dunked in a thick veggie soup, preferably homemade.
You heard it here first.
Obama did not mention it/Katrina in his big Christian respnisbility speech a few weeks ago.
That leaves Edwards who, to his credit. has addressed Katrina repeatedly.
ST @22
My nightmare scenario for them not letting go of power is…
Hillary and Obama get elected and sometime between November and January get jfk’d. The shooter/bomber/whatever turns out to be of iranian descent (and with connections to the current regime) thus providing a casus belli to a) keep the power in their hands under a state of emergency and b) allow them to nuke iran.
TPMmuckraker has a list of this year’s GOP scandals
And yet Bush is in a stronger position than he’s ever been vis a vis te funding of the war in Iraq.
Shearer mentioned that presidential candidates either don’t speak about it at all or in any detail. The people of N.O. are screwed doubly.
Here is the post on the Obama speech, his big Christian “finger shake”..
It is mostly in the first part, but the absence of Katrina in the speech is also farther down, past “NC 17″ and past Melinda Hennenberger bullshit on abortion.
#24–Marisacat–
LOL, thanks for the “1984” reference. Seems the calendar always reads that year now.
As for Senator Clinton solemnly agreeing with President Bush Cheney that the Iranians are the greatest known threat to human civilisation ever known, and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler (never mind that the Iranian navy, which Ahmadinejad does not control, is virtually non-existent and never mind that the Iranian air force, which Ahmadinejad does not control, struggles to put a few dozen first-class fighter jets in the air)…well, of course she will. Clinton’s all in favour of “surgical strikes” against “military targets”–never mind that the targets are in civilian areas, a blockade of Iranian ports will mean the malnutrition and even starvation of tens of thousands of Iranian children, and the term “surgical strike” means carpet-bombing the fuck out of a square kilometre of target area.
I saw the American version of “surgical strikes” in Iraq, thanks ever so much. It means you bomb everything that moves and then bomb it a few more times just in case you missed the ants and centipedes on the first go-round.
Let us not forget that Cheney’s got tactical nukes ready–emphasis on the word “tactical” rather than “nukes”.
The Iranians will respond to American attacks by spreading grief and misery to every corner of the globe with terrorist attacks, but that’s Bush’s and Cheney’s dream: an endless war with an amorphous enemy, the Terrorist, with an indefinite suspension of civil liberties at home and a series of attacks on the Hitler du jour abroad. The ruling class consolidates its power at home and the military-industrial-congressional complex grows fat on the war profiteering while the rest of us can go stand in a soup queue.
HC
but Edwards is so fucking WEAK. I saw his campaign opener in NO, it was pathetic.
Re: Iran and September.
General Petraeus’ report will conclude that a significant number of insurgents are being financed by/supplied by….IRAN.
And that the only way to “win” in Iraq is to attack…IRAN.
And then it’s on to the attack on Iran. Petraeus’ report will mark the turning point. Never mind if it’s true; neither was anything Colin Powell said in his address to the UN about Iraq possessing WMDs, but Bush ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq, anyway.
Truth doesn’t matter if you have enough power, and Bush and Cheney have ruthlessly grabbed more than any executive in history, with the possible exception of Lincoln during the War Between the States. The Democrats have helped by rolling over and playing dead whenever Bush barked a command, of course.
Read graffiti on the men’s room wall?
Or did some, erm, undercover research?
I shall never forget Matthews giggling like a schoolgirl over Bush’s appearance in his flight suit on the deck of the USS Lincoln, when it appeared that Bush had a rather large “package”. I honestly thought Tweety was going to proclaim Bush “dreamy” and sigh like a 50s-era bobbysoxer.
Or did some, erm, undercover research?
Carlson, Matthews, um, these guys seem to run into a lot of roving gay men trolling for sex.
I use the Washington Square Park bathrooms and Port Authority Bus Terminal bathrooms all the time and I’ve been to just about every rest stop on the NJ Turnpike and I’ve never been propositioned.
On that note, the ghost of the late Jerry Falwell is being interviewed on MSNBC and he’s saying that if gay marriage becomes legal Larry Craig might marry Leona Helmsley’s dog.
I’ve never been propositioned, either. But perhaps we’re not as handsome as we think? I’m now feeling a bit insecure, as I always fancied myself quite a catch. I’m not gay, but I wouldn’t mind being propositioned for the same reason a vegetarian wants to be offered a meat platter at a party: one doesn’t want to be ignored :)
I’ve never been propositioned, either. But perhaps we’re not as handsome as we think?
I guess I’m somewhere between Tweety and Tucker but STOP….
There’s no way you can have this conversation without getting yourself into trouble. Tucker found that out the hard way.
I think I may have got hit on by a schizophrenic homeless guy once. But he may have only been asking for money.
Mens Room Etiquette
Sorry!
ms xeno and Glingle just appeared in Moderation, tho the comments are a half hour old.
Upthread at 37 and 39
All I can say is, that would have to be one VERY clean men’s room. Let’s be honest, we men are absolute pigs, and I’ve yet to see a public men’s loo that was clean enough to have sex. Unless the filth and so forth is part of the allure.
I once blundered into the women’s toilet by mistake (didn’t look up at the sign on the door) and found it rather pristine by comparison. “By comparison” being the operative word.
I think a presidential candidate could win a supermajority of electoral votes merely by promising clean public toilets, really.
Poor Beethoven who I’ve always had a fondness for since my family had a bust of him on the piano when I was growing up. (Well, his music helped too…)
re#43 ST — did the Americans kill as many Brits in Iraq in ’91 as they have in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 4.5 years?
I read about the most recent bombing that killed 3? 4? British soldiers in Afghanistan this week and just have to wonder why they keep fighting along side the Americans….
I once blundered into the women’s toilet by mistake
I don’t respect the Mens/Womens signs on single occupancy bathrooms at Starbucks.
I’ve had woman come close to smacking my head against the sink.
In terms of cleanliness, the womens bathrooms are usually worse than the mens.
If there is a line at a womens’ rest room I always crash the mens.
And yes women get very upset if theirs is infiltrated, not sure why
Shadowthief The Iranians will respond to American attacks by spreading grief and misery to every corner of the globe with terrorist attacks, My guess would be that enraged Muslims throughout the world won’t wait for direction or orders from Iran. It would be like the Protestants and Catholics uniting to beat back communism.
I know Bush/Cheney really want to do this, and it’s distrubing to see the French Poodle (wonder wht sort of brainwashing heads of state get when they visit Crawford and Kennebunkport?) along with the usual cast of characters from the rogue’s gallery ramping up their support for taking on Iran, but strangely enough, I’m less concerned right now than I was a year or two ago. Not really sure why and it’s not any one thing that is filtering through and leading me to this conclusion.
Can’t see tht a second 9/11 would work for them like the first one. That fool me once thing has kicked in. What it’s going to take for them to get their war on this time is for Iran to take the bait and strike first, and if Saddam could resist it, Iran will do so as well. Those people probably understand the minds of Bush/Cheny better than we do. While the world still seems to be rather stupid, not sure a “Gulf of X” event will work a second time either. I’m not even sure the military would obey an illegal order from GWB to strike because there might be some back channels now between active and inactive top brass (Powell might even be tring to salvage his reputation).
Or maybe the negative repercussions from expanding this war are so huge that my brain can’t envision that anyone could be stupid, really stupid, enough to proceed with it. All signs to the contrary that Bush/Cheney and Hillary are this stupid. Will just have to remain as open minded and sensitive as possible to anything that develops that says I’m wrong and “it’s on.” God forbid.
I was just talking with my husband about a guy where he works who has been interested in him for quite a while….seems there were a few (men and women) who fancied him, we never had wedding rings before we got our tax return last year, so I guess there were people who he worked with who assumed that whoever the mother of his kids was, was out of the picture or something. Except the guy who is ALSO married with kids and is gay. That shit just pisses me off. If you’re gay, fucking be gay, there’s nothing wrong with it, and hell, if you feel the need to be closeted, be closteded, I’m not going to presume to tell you to live life as an open gay when the majority of society has such bassackward, at best, and downright vile and brutal, at worst, attitudes about homosexuals, but for fuck’s sake, don’t be such a selfish shit that you marry someone and have kids with him/her AND screw around behing their backs. That just fucking sucks.
Pat Buchanan isn’t a libertarian? (which he just proclaimed on MSNBC amidst all of the shouting about Larry Carig)
Brinn–I’ve no idea of the comparison figures of “friendly fire” incidents between GW1 and the curent occupation of Iraq/Afghanistan. The comparisons are somewhat meaningless, anyway, for two reasons:
One, the Americans and the British (as well as other allies) acted together during GW1, and two, the period of combat was very short (100 hours!). The occupation, such as it was, was of Kuwait, not of Iraq. This does not really compare to the occupation of Iraq, with the Brits taking up the occupation duties in the south and the Americans in the rest of the country, so that the two forces are separate. And both the Afghanistan and Iraq operations have been dragging on for years now.
As for why the Brits keep playing tag-a-long with the Americans…there are lots of reasons, but the most cynical one is that unless the Brits ally themselves with the American superpower, they have to face the fact that they are just a middle-sized European country whose economic power is eclipsed by Germany and (ergh!) France. Italy’s GDP has surpassed that of the UK, for example.
Any British PM is free to tell the American President to piss off, of course, but there would be a heavy price to pay for that: the loss of the so-called “special relationship” in which the Brits are supposedly the bridge between the American superpower and the continental Europeans. As for Afghanistan, well, the British people initially supported that military misadventure but never truly supported Iraq, which is why you see British troops being shifted out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.
Long-winded answer, sorry, but it’s a bit complicated.
Well, on the issue of sexuality, I don’t believe it’s an “either/or” proposition. I’ve always viewed sexuality along a continuum, with maybe 5% of the people as truly heterosexual, 5% of the people as truly homosexual, and everybody else some varying degree of bisexual. So some of these married gay men may have been trying quite hard to be heterosexual, but found that they were further along the continuum on the “gay” side than they had imagined.
As for why gay people live on the “down low” or whatever it’s called–well, it’s still quite legal in most places in the United States to discriminate against gays in employment and housing, and then there’s the recrimination of family and friends. I agree it’s best to be honest, but that’s why the government should stop making gay people into second-class citizens. Gay people pay their taxes and all the rest of it; if they have equal responsibilities, they ought to have equal rights.
I don’t believe in “gay rights”, because that implies that one is granting something special to gays that is not their due. I believe in human rights, which means everybody is treated equally, regardless of social class, skin colour, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, what have you. The only people who should be discriminated against are jaywalkers. I can’t stand them.
Marie, re: Iran.
Wish I could be as sanguine as you. It seems there is no bottom to the deception and treachery of Bush and Cheney and the Vichy Democrats. The people would resist, but they are not organised, and they are either uninformed or misinformed by fascist propaganda.
I agree that in the long run, this treachery may come back on those who engage in it, but we are living in the short run–and in the short run, it quite clearly works. Bush’s presidency was fading and failing quickly after his inauguration; 9/11 resurrected it and has allowed him to grasp the tools necessary for dictatorship.
re: bathrooms- once went to a large industry awards dinner where the men outnumber the women by about 99 to one. What a delight to see all those guys in their tuxes waiting in line to use the john.
Women can be pigs too – and far too many restrooms are gross. Doesn’t anybody learn to clean up after themselves anymore?
Brinn #58 – spot on. For my money that was part of what made “Brokeback Mountain” such a tragedy. I loved that movie — and don’t understand why it was trivialized as a “love story” and that was what the enlightened people said. Yeah, right, “Romeo and Juliet” is a love story.
Jay Elias has feminylons tonight at dk. but. but. but. can’t click for cooties fear.
Clearly I need to do more research comparing the loos of the two genders. Or not. I’d rather not. It’s just that the one women’s toilet I was in, was cleaner than any men’s I’d been in.
However did we get onto THIS topic anyway? We need to stop free-associating on this blog and stick to the substantive topics :)
My daughter thought she had been crowned as the official bathroom inspector when she was a kid. She was ruthless in her criticism. Mind you, there are not a lot of options when you’re traveling in the middle of nowhere and Last Chance Gas has the only can in site. She adjusted accordingly.
Olbermann very lamely awarded Fidel Castro a worst person in the world award and not Tucker Carlson.
Gee Keith, criticizing Castro. That takes guts in the USA.
Substantive topics?!? What the hell? :)
I love free-association — my whole life has been one big free-association so far, and I hope to keep it that way.
Re: your response, ST, at #60, yeah, I thought about the non-comparability issue right after I posted it, and just for the record? I LOVE your long-winded responses!!
Re#61 — I’d have to agree with you there on the sexuality continuum thing, and, as my husband pointed out, when I ranted as above to him: how do you know she doesn’t know? To which I had to say, quite right, and shut up about it. Except of course to tell him that fucking around on OUR marriage, male female or otherwise, would be a deal-breaker…at least without prior consent!
oh, and as mom to 2 sons anyone who wants to shoot me dirty looks when I go into a stall in a men’s room with my kid can just fuck right the hell off. I also take them into womens bathrooms and ladies who have that same look can do the same.
Aside from race, sexuality and sex is one of America’s biggest an most inane hang ups. I want to start a pulic bathhouse — I LOVED those when I lived in Japan!
re#63 — right on, Marie, but then again, it’s Hollywood, if they have found something the can’t trivialize the fuck out of, I don’t know what it is. Hollywood, aside, people have such a hard damn time seeing anything but the most superficial od interpretations of most things.
The only laugh I got during Katrina was when castro offered us help.
Silly of Olberman
Perhaps because men have a tendency to pee all over the seat, which is something that bugs me to no end in men’s rooms. I mean don’t men ever need to take a dump in a public restroom. Do men really like mopping up the piss before sitting down?
lucid,
ugh some women would be upset if a man stepped in to wash his hands.
1988-2016: Either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.
Americans need to chill out about criticizing Castro. At least he knows how to plan for a hurricane.
BTW, if there’s an attack on Iran, the chances are it will destroy the Daily Kos.
Elias/Moon, Pumpkinlove et all will stay to cheer it on. Everybody else will probably just leave.
There’s no way they’re going to be able to spin it for the Democrats when the Democrats cave and go along.
Yes
http://antiwar.com/justin/
The Democrats’ failure to defund the Iraq occupation has led, inexorably, to the likelihood of a border “incident” with Iran
I actually went to a school that had coed restrooms & showers. Basically, you’d flip the sign & if it was of the opposite sex, you knocked to see if it was OK to come in. There didn’t really seem to be any problems because everyone was mostly polite and no one generally cared if members of the opposite sex entered, even if they were in the shower or in a towel… those quakers can be quite evolved [except when they’re leaving Kucinich out of their election literature].
Thanks for saving my all-important haute cuisine post, Mcat.
We have mostly unisex bathrooms in PDX. Seems to work out all right. The people I feel worst for in the arrangement where a commercial establishment has only one or two bathrooms are the disabled. :/
I heard Haley Barbour on NPR today, spinning the usually Republican/suburban/country line about how Miss. is doing better than NOLA because they’re “good, hard working folk” who aren’t waiting for handouts. It’s a constant up hear in Milwaukee from our collar suburbs and the winger media here.
I’m so sick of that crypto-racist bullshit. The whole “heartland”, the “this is a NICE place where those things don’t happen” crap. We all know that EVERY place has it’s own fucked up and dangerous and subsumed dangers and peculiarities, and for the most part people try to work hard everywhere. As for the “no handouts in Miss.” thing:
Chris Floyd begs to differ.
On Moyers Journal last Friday he had a couple of people on about Katrina. One thing mentioned is that tons of money has been siphoned off … for condos (the flyover looked extensive) built adjacent to the stadium for Alabamamamama U.
There is all sorts of slobber today around .. Oprah (who was so cosy 2 years ago with Nagin and the asshole police chief) who had Cooper on (he said it itakes “leadership), Brian Williams who had to say that there was widespread “looting” done “everywhere” in NO, day after day ny “young men”… and so on.
But no white paper on the insurance companies, FEMA, where the money really went … and so on.
I worked one summer as the morning janitor at a seafood restaurant. Let me tell you, cleaning the “Mermaids” room was FAR nastier than the “Spouters” room. On top of the usual biological waste, NOTHING is harder to clean than the makeup that gets splattered on the damned mirrors. I swear mascara transmogrifies into cement overnight. Men w/ bad aim can be taken care of w/ bleach and a mop.
Oh, and you don’t want to know about the combination of nerves, lobster on the guy’s tab and alcohol.
oh, and I found this today through Boing Boing, for all of my fellow caffeine addicts.
More from Boing Boing, Clayton James Cubitt’s gallery of Katrina survivors. From his excellent, heartbreaking, inspiring blog, posting the interview he did w/ a photography mag:
oh, and something in the vein of my comment above, that people in NOLA are every bit as America, both good and bad, as any white suburban Republican asshole in MS:
Those coffee drinks are so much nicer when you put DECAF in front of them! Love the taste of coffee but hate the jolt of ‘leaded’.
ST– we call them Gay Rights because we have to label them for the laws we are trying to change because these are the rights gays don’t have. Lots of humans already have ‘human rights’. Just like ‘women’s rights’ are rights that some humans already have too.
DECAF?!?!
Blasphemer!
Coffee w/o caffeine is like passionate kissing without the tongue.
Gee, you’d think this would be big news (?) If that was happening in Iraq, it’d be labeled “terrorism” (with some tie found to Iran or al Qaeda, no doubt). In the US? Just another day at the office.
cnn has some thang up about Biloxi recovering better than New Orleans.I’m sure it all started with the reconstruciton of Trent Lott’s domicile.
I don’t know how much I can say I hate the way this country is going, but I think, when the country as a whole abided the abandoning of New Orleans (outside its Tv ratings at the time) –that it had to do with the least powerful– the poor, minorities and old people. The country, as a whole, has responded as if it was catharisis that these people were forsaken.
double ”leaded” here… 8)
Wired on the FBI surveillance net:
I don’t consume any caffeine… even tea or soda. It not only tweeks some sort of pinched nerve in my back that causes part of my left foot and left hand to get numb, but it has on occassion caused psychotic breaks [and once a grand mal]…
Video: Karl Rove’s car shrink-wrapped by “prankster”
That’s wicked, lucid. I don’t drink coffee. I did for a few years or so and the funny thing is that when I quit, I treated it like my other addictions: no coffee ever again (for some reason). Coffee just made me wired and even made my head itch sometimes, but I do drink caffeinated tea and pop.
The absolute best coffee I ever had though was Jamaican Blue Mountain (in JA, of course – expensive stuff). Mmmm…that was good. I might even have a relapse to try that again. I’ve never had an espresso, latte or any other of those frou frou drinks.
Not that there’s anything wrong with frou frou drinks. ;)
oh I love cofee, when I used to visit friends I would ask how the coffee maker worked and where CNN was on the dial. I’d be up at 5 or 6 am and want both things, right away.
then later, I just traveled iwth my own little manual melitta set up. Cone, filters + ground beans.
I know I’d like to split them from their offices.
NO, they’re not really worried, they AGREE WITH THE REPUBLICANS POLICIES.
ST, thanks for doing all that research –
Cynthia McKinney was one of the best in Congress when it came to questioning the war criminals. Her questioning of Rumsfeld at one of the hearing, was a lesson on how to nail them down and force them to answer questions.
If we had two hundred Cynthia McKinneys, there woud never have been a war in Iraq. If she says Cheney is planning to attack Iraq, I believe her. Not that it’s news.
I saw a headline yesterday about Gonzales and whether or not the Democrats would pursue the investigation. It was a question ‘Will Dems go after Gonzales now the he has resigned?’ It was interesting because no one expects them to stop these criminals. I doubt it.
As for Iran, half the Dems will vote for it. Nearly all of them recently voted for an Iran War Resolution. The way it looks now, it will be a surprise if it doesn’t happen.
*********
Btw, regarding Rove’s car. That was a friendly joke by the WH staff, supposed to mean ‘he’s wrapped up (his job’ or something. The bumper sticker was meant to be a joke also. I saw on tv and thought it was dissgusting the loving way the bimbo news anchor read the report. They treat him like God!
She said that the two eagles were to signify how he had served his country.
Think 97 of them voted for the Iran Resolution.
When the Saints dot org
The pinched nerve was the weirdest thing. When I was 20 [and consuming a ton of caffeine in all forms] I had this bizarre episode that seems to me stroke-like [the entire left side of my body went numb to the point that I had problems walking]. Once the initial thing passed, I had a persistent issue with intermittent numbness in my left hand, shoulder and foot [along with some wicked intermittent pain down the left side of my neck]. This persisted for about 9 years [as I don’t like doctors & didn’t see one from age 18 to age 29 save an emergency room trip for a panic attack once]. Anyhow, when I finally went to have a physical I mentioned this persistent problem, so she sent me for an MRI of my neck and back. The technician reviewed the report & told her ‘I don’t I’ve seen a spine in better shape for someone that age’. So I chalked it up to psychosomatic illness and just dealt with it as I always had before. 4 years later, while I was in a 6 month period where I was getting no sleep and drinking 3+ cups of coffee a day [plus tea and at least 1 soda], I went out to dinner with a friend, rolled my ankle when I got up from the table, sat back down and proceeded to have a grand mal. I requested from my Dr. [on hospital orders – I wouldn’t stay in the emergency room overnight] a referral for an MRI of the brain. Again zero problems [and of course confirmation that I didn’t have a stroke when I was 20]. It was at this point that I had started [in my obsessive exploratory medical reading] seeing things on caffeine allergy. And while not spot on, many of the feelings caffeine gave me seemed to match up. So I quit. Within 2 weeks, this now year 13 old chronic numbness problem disappeared completely. A few months later, on a day in which I’d gotten very little rest, I tried a cup of coffee. I had a complete psychotic break & almost went to the emergency room again. That was the last caffeine I’ve had [save the occassional dark chocolate].
re: Rove’s car …
a.k.a. operation “he’s just a nice fella”
I love the graphic for leadersheep.
Liberal catnip….I can’t find the link….but the reason Bush was pushing My Pet Goat was that, that book was part of No Children Left Behind, and a big republican fundraiser got the no bid, exclusive contract to publish the book.
She said that the two eagles were to signify how he had served his country.
I didn’t know it was done by WH lackeys. I can think of better symbols of how he has “served his country”.
Quite the medical history, lucid. I have problems with numbness too. I guess that’s caused by the scoliosis and bone spurs they recently found in my mid-spine – not to mention fibromyalgia.
The numbness in my left arm years ago was how I found out I had fibro. I was driving to work one nite, the arm went numb, thought I was having a stroke and went to emerg. Luckily, the dr I saw knew about fibro and referred me to a specialist who dx me.
As the numbness turns…
As not read by Oprah – What do you do when the most famous book pusher won’t mention yours?
oh, priceless.
With that, I bid thee all good night!
Still can’t find link. Could have been McGraw_Hill… and one other. Bush was on the Corporate timeclock.
Billions:
Oh – it’s even more interesting than that… but I don’t want to bore everyone.
Suffice it to say, save the time I broke my face and the doctors successully restored it almost to the way it looked before, I’ve had more success self-treating my various issues with research than any doctor has had using the ‘common wisdom’. I often wonder what exactly doctors are taught in medical school besides how to patch you up if you’ve been shot, hit by a car, or had a heart attack [not to belittle those skills – as it’s pretty amazing what they can do in that regard].
On coffee – it’s good for you. Reduces alzheimers risk and has those bioflavanoids or something. But sure wish the caffeine did much for me — have been known to drink a pot and go to bed. For some reason a decade ago, thought it might be better to drink decaf. Was okay taste wise and didn’t notice any diff w/o caffeine. After three monts developed a horrible facial skin rash. Through a process of elimination thought it could be the decaf coffee. So went back to regular but wasn’t convinced that it was the coffee. Guess it’s like many allergies, once developed, hyper sensitive. Only took two cups of strong decap Starbucks to inflame my whole face. (Lovely sight) Still being curious, I tested some swiss water process decaf. Bingo, it’s not the coffee but whatever chemical is used to decaf it.
MitM- #88 -saw that article earlier today. They are getting warrants for those wiretaps. And seems not to have any relationship to the NSA programs and this one was authorized by Congress in ’96. Not sure how the FBI can manage this when last time I checked they were still having problems with an e-mail system. Important that we know about this stuff, and it can be misuse but not in high volume, is my guess.
The problem with the Bush team may be insufficient “gray matter”:
Liars Brains Wired Differently. Not sure we needed high tech research to figure this out — and the implications for use of this research is scary, so there you have it.
Marie
Decaf gives me terrible headaches. At the base of the skull, ugh. The water process much less so.
But i like coffeecoffee … so I drink the full throttle dark roast.
MitM – gatekeepers everywhere… must keep the dominant mythology alive with manufactured ‘evidence’. Media [including blogmedia] is no different from the medieval Catholic Church – if you or your ideas fall outside the narrative, you don’t exist. And if you persist in your heresy, we will excommunicate you. And if you actually win people over to your side, here’s a nice pyre to bring you eternal damnation.
Marisa with you on the regular dark roast. I was fine with the dark roast decaf –except for when the horrible rash developed and spread. It looked as if I’d been burned with a hot iron.
As I almost never drink tea or soft drinks, never worry about drinking too much coffee.
darker the roast the better, that’s what I say.
lucid – what I liked/was appalled by was how they wouldn’t let him tell his real story, that he was BETTER. They had their narrative, and they were going to get it. Sick.
I know I promised to go to sleep, but I had to finish reading this: Patients Turn to No-Interest Loans for Health Care
Creditworthy until these things are done with them …
un-fuckin’-believable.
Marie – coffee is good for you. I wish I could drink it. It’s full of anti-oxidants [like dark chocolate]. So is tea…. soda, well, notsomuch.
But caffeine does affect a certain percentage of people in a higly negative manner… unfortunately I’m one of them [you can’t imagine how I pine for coffee when I smell it brewing every day in the office, because I really do love the taste of good coffee].
So for my anti-oxidants I stick to copious supplies of berries, green vegetables and citrus. I eat more fruit & veggies than any other food group – the rawer the better.
#84–I understand what they’re called “gay rights”, Wilfred, but I hope you take my point, as well…it may seem a silly argue over semantics, but “women’s rights”, “black people’s rights”, “gay rights” to me makes it sound as if people are asking for some special set of rights just for them, when what they are asking for is to be a first-class citizen. I would prefer the longer “equal rights for gays”, but then again, I’m a long-winded bastard and I do live a good preposition (not to mention a good proposition).
Since we’re comparing coffee addictions (or lack thereof):
Shadowthief likes his coffee fully caffeinated, hot as hell and black as a Hollywood agent’s soul. Do not–repeat do NOT–put whipped cream, shaved chocolate, or anything remotely frou-frou on top of my damned coffee. Just make it strong enough to stand up without benefit of the mug and leave me alone until I’ve consumed enough to make the transformation from beast to human. And pray do not utilise Italian terminology in referring to my coffee, unless we are in Rome, and then feel free if you happen to be Italian.
Actually, I discovered this summer it’s not the Italians who do the best coffee–it’s the Swedes. #2 coffee drinkers in the world (slightly behind the Finns), and the Swedes and I are in complete accord on the Fine Art of Coffee Preparation and Consumption Thereof.
Ahh, coffee . . . nectar of the gods. Like Marie, I can quaff a quart and go right off to bed.
I’m told that mine gets stronger every year.
When I congratulated myself out loud for reducing my consumption to around half a dozen cups a day, my daughter remarked that I was like a crackhead “cutting back” from eight rocks a day to one rock the size of a softball. :)
Oh, and I agree with Marie that coffee is good for your health–in my case, OTHER people’s health, because I’m far less inclined to homicide when fully caffeinated :)
Urrrgh… health is not a consumer good. It’s not a fucking option.
When I broke my face last November in a hit and run, the cops didn’t do their job & no one got the plate number. If I didn’t fork over the $325 a month premium for my health insurance [which I can only afford because I make a decent living – and it’d an extra $175 a month if I wasn’t part of ‘The Freelancers Union’ which organized as a group to negotiate a group rate], I would have been on the hook for an $18,000 hospital bill. Sure, I could have sued the city, because the cops didn’t do their job and recognize that there was a camera at the corner bar that caught the whole episode that had already been wiped when I did my own investigation a week and a half later [just out of surgery]… hey – they didn’t even bother to file a police report on the hit and run…
That aside. Fucking $18,000. $1,500 just to make sure I didn’t have a traumatic, life threatening head injury and the rest to perform a necessary surgery to keep my right eye from sinking & causing permanent vision damage & restore my jaw to a shape in which I could open it normally… not to mention look like a normal human being, as opposed to a Looney Tunes character after having a frying pan applied to the side of their head.
Could I pay that off over several years? Yes. Could a working family with a gross income of $35,000 or less and a couple of kids? Not in a million years.
moiv, you do realise that eventually you have to just chew the beans in order to get your full caffeine fix?
Mattes, I remember that re Chris Doherty. He is a friend of the Bushes. I thought they were investigating that scam, NCLB, and he was a prime suspect, airc. They were forcing schools to buy their education materials. I’ll have to look that up again. I think that’s why Neil (underage sex) Bush went into the Education business, and why Bush is always pushing reading This was another horror story of corruption involving Jeb also.
Lucid, lucky you figured it out. I wonder if allergies like that can eventually kill people if they don’t identify the cause.
Miss D cnn has some thang up about Biloxi recovering better than New Orleans.I’m sure it all started with the reconstruciton of Trent Lott’s domicile.
I heard that on Softball and they were falling all over that crook, Haley Barbour. I can’t watch tv anymore without feeling like throwing things. These dim-witted ‘news’ anchors fall all over themselves when they have a story on crooks like Barbour or Rove. They seem to know about these people.
I remember sometime in the ’90s, he was caught partying with a bunch of women, or something and there was video, airc. Probably why he hasn’t run for president.
Impeach Haley Barbour
They are just blatant about it all – but nothing is ever done.
Absolutely. Espresso beans dipped in near-bitter chocolate are my favorite snack.
But like you, ST, no adulerants in the cup itself. Utter blasphemy.
MitM – #111 send it to Keith O and suggest he compare that with what his worst person in the world manages to do for the people in his country. Did the guy bother to see SICKO?
Take my rich strong coffee with a little milk (steamed is better), no sugar. Black’s okay but prefer it with milk, not half/half or cream.
Sabrina, that’s why I turn on the television even less often than I drink decaf, and rely upon y’all to let me know if anything important accidentally slips through the net and makes it onto the screen.
It’s just not good for me.
On NCLB -one of the big winners was McGraw Hill (some long standing relationship with the Bushes) and not for programs or books but testing materials. That’s all NCLB is — tests. Another stupid waste of money. You want good education, pay enough so that the smartest people become teachers – the women’s movement sure took away this country’s right to get good education on the cheap.
I supose the terrible HFC is still going. Household Finance CO.
I knew someone who made the mistake of borrowing from them. 36% and of course targetting people tapped out or ignorant.
You know, with the change in the bankruptcy laws, medical costs, and now foreclosure, people are desperate. And those not, soon will be.
For years, I get 5 – at least – calls a day offering bizarre rates and large mortgage loans. One reason I ignore the phone.
The country is just so deep in the hole to bad business practices. Criminal
Marisacat, thanks, 97 voted for it. So, I think Cynthia is right. We didn’t even have that many for the Iraq War resolution.
Mitm, ‘he’s just a nice fella’ ~ that’s how they’re trying to paint Rove now. We’re supposed to love that his ‘friends’ are playing cute tricks on him.
Lucid, I can’t believe they didn’t even bother to investigate that accident. Sometimes it’s like we live in a third world country. I think our birthrate is worse than some of them now.
Oh, and coffee, I love coffee also, strong too, like ST. I hate our deli coffee – it’s like water. Burger King has good coffee …
lucid, that’s a real horror story. This week I read a magazine article written by a woman who was bitten by a copperhead. The hospital kept her overnight and gave her a course of antivenom.
The bill was $41,000 — over $36,000 of it for the antivenom alone. Most people bitten by copperheads in Texas live in rural areas, where most are uninsured. It pays to take an extra two minutes to slip your boots on, and not go out to the chickenhouse in flip-flops.
The News HOur has been runing a series looking at the schools. Oh what bad news. Anyone who could left, at least the traditional classroom and some left entirely.. Some teachers they had profiled over the years, wept in the most recent interviews.
The plan was to break the schools. Like everything else, break it. Kill it, remove it from memory. And imo not a single national Democrat cared enough. They are mute animals. The game was to clean up as the country cratered.
and even then they are just like HFC, what moves in before the kill.
Moiv, I hardly ever watch it, since the 2004 election, when I couldn’t even flip the channels in case I’d catch a glimpse of Bush, even for a second, just couldn’t handle it.
I thought I was going crazy but then so many other people said they felt hte same way, just couldn’t bear to watch him.
Marisacat, too true, re the schools. The poorest schools are the worst victims of that vile program. Democrats signed on to it. And they sneaked that recruitment horror into it, which no one knew about for months. Also, I read, the whole program was conjured up by business with no educators involved. They called children ‘products’ or something. I’ll have to find all that again.
But what Matte linked, that was total profiteering on failure. Teachers were devastated. Marie and Matte are right, it was McGraw Hill, friends of the Bushes.
And then, speaking of Katrina. Remember when Barbara Bush ‘donated’ money to some NOLA schools, but only on condition that they use Neil’s stupid educational program. So, she gets a tax break and he gets a contract.
Sigh, I keep thinking of more … Neil was in the ME or involved with someone from there, selling his program also … I forget what that corruption was about now also. So much of it, you just can’t keep track.
Sickening, because you’re right, they do want to break the schools, and control them.
Hsu’s money apparently too hot now
Clinton to Donate funds to charity. Every other Democratic is rushing to do the same. Smart move, get rid of it while the Craig thing is in center stage (yesterday would have been even better).
HSU
score one for the WSJ, I don’t know who else reported on the Hsu and Paw family connection (how the Hsus funneled the money to Hillary), but i linked to it a couple days ago.
The whole thing stinks.
It wasn’t long beore the story about liars’ brains cut to the chase — what it’s worth.
I guess we can figure out who will be funding the next study.
Just heard on the radio that Leahy has told Bush that he looks forward to a new AG who will “unite the nation.”
When did that become part of the job description?
Marie I blogged about that at PFF…
That isnt all the cash he gave her. He bundles it thru other people. That $23K is nothing. Probably just what is tied directly too him by name.
I think someone else blinked and Clinton had to give up the funds to not look as bad.
Wow… they are really getting good at misinformation:
oh too funny. SOmoene jsut sent me this.
I think fabooj is mistaken. All I ever saw here about her (and I never paid her any attention myself, only some people were of interest to me) – but I have seen comments here that she needs to stop posting about all her efforts – which come to naught – to diversify YkosWhacks.
Or, you know, get a clue. Because KosWhacks are not interested.
They need to cut taylormattd, or what ever the name is, a food check. Walking around money. That poster stands duty.
Just heard on the radio that Leahy has told Bush that he looks forward to a new AG who will “unite the nation.” === moiv
jesusfuckingchrist. Most people don’t know who the aG is.
And really, knowing who it is has been painful for a couple decades at least. And if I think, probably for a long long time.
SB – it might have had something to do with the fact that I’d been knocked dead cold, for a good 10 minutes, was previsouly drunk & supposedly a bit beligerent when I came to, for a period of time I don’t remember, about not wanting to go to the hospital… Then again, I would think when someone is discarded unconscious in the middle of an intersection by a fleeing car, the police might want to make an investigation anyways…
Moiv – that Copperhead thing is insane. How can an anti-venom cost $36,000 when a 3 hour surgery & 2 day stay in the hospital to reconstruct 7 broken bones in my jaw and eye with titanium plates [in NY no less] only costs $16,500?
There are serious things amiss in our medical system beyond the lack of access.
As for Neil Bush – the only reason he never ran for political office is that he was one of the primary players in the S&L scandal in the ’80’s [big surprise there…]. Why should it surprise anyone that he’s now raking in the dough on government contracts to help destroy the public education system in this country.
As for TV, I stick with Star Trek and sports and movies… with indulgences in Law & Order on occasion. I can’t watch the news anymore… or any ‘reality tv’.
#89. Wiretapping – why has it become acceptable that this shit goes on on a massive scale? Nobody seems to care.
FBI wiretapping rooms in field offices and undercover locations around the country are connected through a private, encrypted backbone that is separated from the internet. Sprint runs it on the government’s behalf.
Where’s the call for a boycott against Sprint?
I couldn’t access my hotmail account earlier today. The MSN message was that my acct was “temporarily unavailable”. It wasn’t a connection problem at my end. My first thought was that it was being reviewed by some bot. How did we end up living like this?
An AG will be the uniter, not the divider!!!
Somehow I thought the job description was simply to enforce federal law. That would seem somewhat simple, however given that federal law no longer exists, I suppose it would now be difficult.
So now it’s political.
And you’re right Mcat – I can’t remember when it hasn’t been… Even Bobby was political in the manner he carried out the office.
Catnip – I’ve been on Sprint since ’97 for my cell service… but I would imagine a file was started on me much further back… when I was on the Earth First list from ’88 on [age 16]…
There you have it folks! I’m an ecoterrorist.
Money As Debt
Very good description of the Banking system and how and why we are getting into this crises.
How did we end up living like this? — catnip
I was watching a PBS program tonight on the actual step by step defection of Nureyev. It was shatteringly beautiful at times, in photographs and recollections.
But as much as this country has supported hard right regimes and so on, it hit me suddenly hard, deep down they admired the soviet repression. The extreme brutality. The sheer overwhelming supporession of people by the State
Because we are in early to middle stages of lockdown. No question.
I read an interview iwth Frances Fox Piven a few years ago, where she said we are allowed these “little” things, our political books (the same number iof people read all the boooks, LOL) and political mvies and documentaries, blogs etc., as against the bulwark of ignorance in the nation, it really does not matter that we have these illusions of freedom.
That sounded on target to me.
Once again, Petraeus’ weapons inventory fuck up is news with US weapons showing up in Turkey via Iraq. (Added irony: just think about how much Bushco rails about Iranian weapons in Iraq damn near every day).
Heckuva job, Petraeus. Someone give that man a medal of freedom.
: My first thought was that it was being reviewed by some bot. How did we end up living like this?
They wouldn’t have to shut you out to do that.
An e-mail account is just a folder on a server (computer) . If you have the password, you can look at anybody’s e-mail without their even knowing it.
I used to work for an ISP and part of my job was maintaining Unix servers. I could have read anybody’s e-mail any time I wanted to just by opening a file or two.
The problem is that random e-mail ir BORING.
Think about being on a commutor train and listeing to people talk on their cell phones.
“Hi. I’m on the train. Yeah. I’m on the train. Right now I’m talking on the phone on the train”.
You wouldn’t want to read that or listen to that.
That’s why they search for keywords. Bin Laden. Great Satan. Mecca. Zionist Entity. George Bush son of a pig and Hillary Clinton daughter of Satan.
And that’s why the NSA is so important. They can just vacuum up anything that goes through a satillite.
Of course the people who design these key word searches are flawed human beings. And its just too easy to get on a list by accident.
Down with Imperialist America.
Television is the tool of Satan. I avoid it, except for watching movies rented on DVD. Sometimes I put things on top of the television, though.
Marisacat is absolutely right about the educational system–it was intentionally broken, and broken it shall remain. A first-rate educational system doesn’t rely on standardised test after standardised test, but rather builds inquisitive minds and challenges children’s established notions of the world. I know, because I went to a very good school and the teachers there turned me into a lifelong questioner.
Questioners and questions are not now wanted. What is wanted now is quiet obedience, passivity, and incurious minds. Questioners do not make good worker bees, and it is worker bees who are needed. This country wants people who will do what they are told, and the schools, which now teach rote memorisation rather than logical thinking, are doing the job of the ruling class just so.
One of my friends, a teacher for 32 years, dryly calls “No Child Left Behind” “Every Other Child Left Behind” because the feds only funded the mandate at 50% and left the states to scramble to pick up the other 50% (thereby achieving the dastardly double whammy of forcing schools into a soul-killing cycle of teaching to the test and endless testing AND starving more creative programmes of necessary funds).
If I were the governor of a state, I would tell the feds to take their educational funds and jam ‘em where the sun never shines. The feds don’t provide that much money to schools, anyway; most is provided locally. I’d raise taxes to make up the difference and make the schools in my state not only the best in the nation, but some of the best in the world. Other governors would learn from the model and emulate it.
Well, it’s a dream I have. Suppose anybody would vote for a governor who spoke with a British accent?
Yes, that’s what we call down here un chingo de dinero, lucid, but 36K is what it cost. I looked around and found the article in the online archives of Texas Parks and Wildlife.
By the way, I think I’m going to dream tonight that I’m starring in a remake of “Deliverance”, starring Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews, Karl Rove, and me.
Karl Rove will play the Ned Beatty part….
…and I? Burt Reynolds, of course.
A $41,000 copperhead is struggling to free itself from the filters.
I was just thinking.
1988-2016
The 28 years the USA will have been governed by one of two families.
Do you smell the oligarchy?
Why is Hillary the front runner? Because her husband was president. She was able to get a jump on fund raising because her husband could sell pardons in December of 2000. She has contacts in the elite she developed from 92-2000 that no other candidate can match.
Why is Bush president? Because his father was.
Why was his father president? Because HIS father had access to all that KEWL Nazi money he got while he was Senator.
And yet I’m a “purity troll” for wondering about this I guess.
#143. Because we are in early to middle stages of lockdown. No question.
I was going to write…”if there was a way for the neocons to keep the power of the WH, that lockdown would be coming soon”. The thing is – the neocons have already grabbed so much power that even if they seized the WH, locked themselves in it and ruled by only appearing on television, I don’t know how many people would even care. That’s the scary part.
I can just imagine the kossack brigade: “quick, write your congressperson!!” “send them roses even” “just don’t get up off your butt to actually DO something – that might be untidy for THE PARTY”.
It truly is a screwed situation already.
Suppose anybody would vote for a governor who spoke with a British accent?
Are you kidding me? Americans will accept any total idiocity as long as it comes wrapped in a British accent.
Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan were saying the same things Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity are saying.
But we think they’re smart because of their accents.
Because we are in early to middle stages of lockdown. No question.
OH MY GOD
I’m going to have to send 25 bucks to Darcy Burner RIGHT NOW.
That’s why they search for keywords. Bin Laden. Great Satan. Mecca. Zionist Entity. George Bush son of a pig and Hillary Clinton daughter of Satan.
Whoops. Well no wonder then.
I used to joke with a friend of mine when we’d suddenly hear a click on the phone line – we’d say hi to the NSA or CIA and tell them we hoped they were enjoying the conversation.
They obviously fear the catnip now. lol
Because they are precisely that & always have been. We have never given up slavery in a true sense. Yes, we grant ‘illusions’, and have fought wars, and passed Constitutional Ammendments, but with the exception of the aristocracy – who cast these illsuions, we are all still slaves. It amazes me that even the lucky educated can’t reflect upon their own lives & understand this – after all, the priveledged are the ‘leisure class’ – they have enough time to recognize a demon when they see it. But I suppose now it just gets projected into the image of the dirty Mexican intruding into their suburb…
Such pathetic creatures we.
I used to joke with a friend of mine when we’d suddenly hear a click on the phone line – we’d say hi to the NSA or CIA and tell them we hoped they were enjoying the conversation.
This must be on some kind of list.
Marisa #136 added my two cents – that’s the one that seemed to like me who might have gotten that memo. So, we’ll see if this calls him out.
liberal catnip – the FBI program started in 1996. And they do get warrants for what that’s worth.
HC is right, random communication intercepts are boring and useless. Doubt tht the data mining based on key words is of any use at all. Like a terrorist is going to send a message, “bin Laden will be pleased.” Give me a break. Whatever key words or phrases they can possibly use would either be so specific/special that they’d pick up nothing or so broad that the false positives would be overwhelming and there may not be a real positive in the batch. All this shit is like a really expensive virtual Maginot Line.
lucid, you’re harshing my delusions, man. ;-) I mean, I’ve had a whole lifetime to let them build up like psychic plaque, and now you just think you’ve a right to dissolve them with harsh, corrosive reality?
Like major bummer dude.
if that idiot in the white house was interested in helping the children of new orleans read at grade level, he’d do something about helping them reading at, or above, the water level first.
the FBI program started in 1996. And they do get warrants for what that’s worth.
But…thanks to the trusty Dems…since I am a foreigner, if I am suspected of being remotely involved in any kind of so-called terrorist activity, my correspondence with any American is fair game without an initial warrant, right?
Like a terrorist is going to send a message, “bin Laden will be pleased.”
Bin Laden used to have a Satellite phone and he used to talk to everybody he knew in the Middle East from Afghanistan and he didn’t care if anybody heard him.
But then Clinton launched the cruise missiles and almost got him so he ditched the satellite phone and decided only to communicate by tapes given to trusted messengers.
Wasn’t there news just last week that suspected terrorists were talking about cheese and football as code words? And here I am blabbing on about cheesecake every day…
Wasn’t there news just last week that suspected terrorists were talking about cheese and football as code words?
Well they couldn’t find anything with Jose Padilla actually saying “let’s blow shit up in America” so they concluded that his talking about studying Arabic or about his family was code for “let’s blow shit up in America”.
And he was also scary and Latin looking and they had the press conference anyway after they caught him then tortured him and turned him into a schizophrenic so they had to charge him with something that would put him in jail forever.
Oh yeah, they played a Bin Laden tape at the trial.
#156. lol…it’s not illegal to laugh at that, is it? (listening for black helicopters)
Oh yeah, they played a Bin Laden tape at the trial.
And that should be the issue in his appeal that reverses that verdict. (Well, it actually should be the fact that they drove him insane but that doesn’t seem to count for anything these days.)
You’ll probably like the pic accompanying this article, mcat: Upbeat Bush hints at more troops for Iraq. What a bizarre contrast between the story, the pic and its caption.
(Well, it actually should be the fact that they drove him insane but that doesn’t seem to count for anything these days.)
It’s interesting. The woman who wrote “Reviving Ophelia” threw her presidential award back in the American Psychological Institute’s face because they won’t refuse to particpate in torture.
And do you know what inspired her to do it?
She saw photos of the 20 year old girl at the IWW protest in Rhode Island getting her leg snapped by the cops and concluded she couldn’t let a bunch of college kids take all the heat fighting for her freedom.
Good points: Defusing Nuclear Hysteria
#167. Good for her. That’s inspiring.
The woman who wrote “Reviving Ophelia” threw her presidential award back in the American Psychological Institute’s face because they won’t refuse to particpate in torture. HCfM
Fuck yes, I read that the other day. But that has got to spread. NOt enough of it.
I was appalled at who stood on the stage with Myers, Tenet, Bremer, etc when they got the presidential medal of freedom.
sickening.
But I found it to be a signal event a couple months ago at a rally .. somewhere like PA or MD… for Hillary … a woman who had travelled to it from NY stood and screamed at her, did she read the NIE prior to voting for the AUMF, IWR Oct 2002.
Screamed. And it wnet on for a while, as Hillary oozed and skidded around.
hell why not scream. These people in DC are killers.
But when the woman was removed the audience applauded HILLARY.
Slip in the blood, because that is what they were doing. But, very revealing event.
Speaking of Iran – don’t know if this has been linked to here: Study: US preparing ‘massive’ military attack against Iran
Depressing.
HC – regardless of what happened on 9-11, I still don’t think Bin Laden was off the payroll… nor was the Pakistani ISI, which wired $100,000 to Atta about a week before 9-11…
I don’t think the cruise missiles to Afghanistan or the cruise missiles blowing up an aspirin factory in the Sudan were remotely an attempt to ‘get Bin Laden’… I could go on, but here’s a lovely article about the money trail & mythological setup should you like to read it.
a woman who had travelled to it from NY stood and screamed at her, did she read the NIE prior to voting for the AUMF, IWR Oct 2002.
The fact that she didn’t should dog her everywhere she goes. That is truly unforgivable. Imagine is she was president. How much would she actually read then before making decisions that end up killing thousands of people?
Apparently reading is not a prerequisite for the office. However, blindly following foreign policy assessments of unelected militaristic scum is.
catnip # 160
Never email me! Never!!!
(I fear the power of catnip — FEAR it!)
When my daughters hear those funny sounds on the line, they mutter “Iran contra.” The one who lives in DC (and is married to a guy with one of those funny British accents) is our Early Warning System for black helicopters — and the SIL who lives here grew up El Salvador, and knows they’re real.
I cant make a medical diagnosis but something sounded strange and so I did a quick read to refresh myself. It is very rare that anti venom is used for copperhead bites. The antivenom can cause a more severe reaction Its only used in very extreme cases where there is wide spread tissue damage. The bites usually arent fatal because the snakes cant deliver enough venom for a lethal dose . several people are saying the most common treatment is simply a pain killer.
The copperhead is a viper BTW
ugh it’s all of them. I doubt she even read the summary, which is her official answer. And of course she misrepresents the meaning of the AUMF anyway.
And despite Edwards grand apology, he never mentions he was a co author. I don’t think he even read the summary either. Sure di dnot listen to Graham of FL who begged senators to read it.
Frankly I loved watching Russert dissect him in … Feb I think it was. Poor blunt blowhard Russert could do it with his eyes closed… I used that trasncript for a post too.
oops
co author should be co sponsor of the AUMF
(I fear the power of catnip — FEAR it!)
Finally! Someone who gets it! ;)
from the guardian
people should jsut start filing into the capitol here one by one until there are 1000s of us and just sit in.
Video of Conyers talking about impeachment on Wednesday saying nancy may have taken it off her table but he hasn’t taken it off his. (raw Story.)
but…
Yeah. It’s called having power without actually using it.
Rev —
Yes, copperheads are pit vipers, and the most attractive ones, at that. They used to den up under the corrugated tin floor of my grandmother’s dog pen in the wintertime, where her hounds slept — for the warmth. And they like barns and corrals, too, because where there’s feed there are rats.
Even as children, on summer nights we ventured out to the “little house behind the house” with a flashlight in one hand and a hoe in the other. Because if you stepped on one of the damned things, it was seven miles to town.
It’s quoted tirelessly. I’ll quote it again:
But that blockquote must be in your mind in the way she sings it:
We are stardust [3-4-1-dom7]
billion year old carbon… writing out changes in this way is insane
We are Golden
caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden…
Damn, just think about it in your minds… ‘Ladies of the Canyon’, beautiful rehash on ‘Shadows and Light’.
These moments, on these albums, exemplify everything beautiful to me. And everything true.
To combine this
don’t think the cruise missiles to Afghanistan or the cruise missiles blowing up an aspirin factory in the Sudan were remotely an attempt to ‘get Bin Laden’… I could go on, but here’s a lovely article about the money trail & mythological setup should you like to read it.
and this
people should jsut start filing into the capitol here one by one until there are 1000s of us and just sit in.
</i.
with Katrina.
A lot of the 9/11 truth people think that if you can prove that 9/11 was a false flag operation, people would be so outraged at the killing of Americans by the US government they’d rise up in rebellion and overthrow the government.
But people saw Bush leave tens of thousands of people on their roofs to die two years ago and didn’t rise up in rebellion. It was right on national TV, live. And the reaction of a lot of Americans was “I better git me a gun in case them nigras try to loot my store”.
Anyway though I think the true significance of Katrina was this.
After it happened, noone could lie and say he/she didn’t know what Bush was about. It was the virtual equivalent of getting the walk through the Nazi death camps in 1945. Once it happened, no German could plead ignorance.
Once you saw the way Bush reacted to Katrina saying all you needed was “more and better Democrats” was laughable.
There’s no excuse. These people are fascists who don’t care about American lives. They do care about taking away your civil liberties and taking your money.
The fact that the proof is hidden in plain site (in the live televised coverage of Katrina) and not in some unreadable “9/11 is an indide job” book is proof that God has a sense of humor.
To see the “truth” white Americans have to take off their racist blinders. Then it’s as clear as day.
a military strike against Iran would truly be the end of this country. and the people who would make that decision know that they will be shielded from the consequences.
and really, the only way to cover-up the disaster of the Iraq war is to have a world war that makes Iraq a footnote.
liberalcatnip, no. 144,
We gave Chiang Kai Shek huge amounts of military equipment for use against Mao’s forces in the late 1940s. A lot of it was sold to the Communist by his soldiers. Same thing happened during the Vietnam War.
Of coffee and copperheads,
When in Ireland, make sure you sample the Bewley’s. They actually have a few Starbucks branches there now, but if you can get Bewley’s (and most places have it, even in small towns) you won’t miss any designer brews.
And what’s even more of a wake-up than a good, strong cup of your favorite coffee? How about returning your garbage pail to its normal place outside your garage and finding yourself looking at a tan and brown spotted snake resting peacefully in the branches of a dying evergreen just outside your garage door? That was what I found myself doing at 7 AM this morning. This is a very old and tall tree, and the thing was more or less at eye level for me, which put it at close to 6 feet off the ground (I’m 5’10”). As I mentioned the tree is dying, and this part of the it where the snake was is largely denuded, so it was pretty obvious. When I saw it, the thing couldn’t have been more than 3 feet from me, probably less, but it didn’t move in the slightest. It was arranged across the branches so that it’s head and tail were both hidden. The exterminator who came said it probably wasn’t a copperhead as they apparently never leave the ground, and from a perusal of Internet pictures I think it was most likely some variety of brown snake which is absolutely harmless (most of them don’t even bite). Anyway, the guy spread a lot of stuff that smells like mothballs around the immediate area (the snake had departed by the time he got there and he couldn’t find it). I’d been wondering what had happened to the chimpmunks I’d seen so much of a few months ago, I guess now I know. There was another non-venemous black snake living in the outside wall of my house that some construction workers discovered a couple of months ago when I had an old wooden deck replaced with a concrete patio. They killed that one and stuck it in their ice cooler, for what purpose I don’t know.
Lots of good stuff over at NO Indymedia this week. Just to state the obvious, in case anyone got distracted by other equally interesting stuff.
What got me about Household Finance when I was still Union: They were the holders of the AFSCME credit card offered to all members. I mean, WTF ?! Not that I’m an expert on financial regs like some of you but a fucking national union wouldn’t have wanted its employees, oh, I don’t know– IN A CREDIT UNION where we could bring our business to OTHER UNIONIZED EMPLOYEES ?
So much stupidity, so little time. >:
new thread — better late than never… ;)
LINK