Random Acts of Hypocrisy

So there I was, behind a car with a Shriners sticker and a WDCX sticker on the back, and the driver throws out a cigarette butt. A few blocks later and the car turns without using a turn signal (horrors).

I thought the Shriners are a philanthropic fraternal organization, and WDCX is definitely a Christian radio station. What's fraternal about littering with a butt? What's Christian about failing to signal?

I'm just askin'. If you're going to represent with stickers, behave yourself. Your actions will reflect on who you represent.

Maybe he was driving his dad's car.

Is the DHS our Maginot Line?

The Department of Homeland Security may be our very own Maginot Line, the string of fortifications built by the French after World War I to shield against invasion from Germany.  The Maginot Line did what it was supposed to do and was never over-run, but the Germans did an end run and invaded France anyway.

Our DHS Maginot Line may (or may not) protect us against a terrorist attack.  It has proven inadequate or ill-conceived or poorly implemented to protect us against the ravages of two hurricanes, Katrina and Rita.   It is only by throwing lots of money at the problem, a tactic the Republicans used to accuse the Democrats of using, that the response to Rita had even the outward appearance of success.  That and the fact that Rita missed Houston.

How likely is it that the aftermath of a real terrorist attack, for which we will have no warning, will be any better than the aftermath of Katrina?  Or is the primary DHS responsibility to ensure the continuity of Republican rule by making sure they all get to hidey-holes?

What other threats are we not protected against?  Do the Centers for Disease Control have the resources to fight Bird Flu, or have they been cut back to be prepared to fight a terrorist biological attack?  Which is realistically the greater threat?

Glory Comes to the Saviour

Mebbe the reason Bushco screwed up FEMA is because on some level they understand there is no glory in preparedness. Glory comes to the saviour.

That's why every now and then you hear about a firefighter charged with arson - they want to be the hero.

We're not gonna take it, anymore

Yeh. Like he said.

Kid's Food Pyramid

That's not a pyramid, that's a teepee.  When did anything with three corners turn into a pyramid?  A pyramid is built up from the ground, one block stacked on another.  This is not like that.

Delay Indicted

Holy Toledo!

It's about damn time.

Presidential Cadence

Ever notice how Shrub speaks in short, round sentences?  Is that all they can fit on the teleprompter at one time?  Or are short sentences all that he can remember at once?

Sort of like rabbit droppings.  All round, piled together, and it doesn't matter what order they're in. 

Set Theory, Brownie, and Katrina

This explains a lot. Seems the Bush White House "Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana" left out a few Louisiana parishes. If you look at the list on the document that Governor Blanco sent to the President requesting a declaration of a state of emergency, there are 64 parishes listed. The Bush statement lists 40.

On the Louisiana document:
There are 14 parishes

expected to receive major damage based on the anticipated track of Hurricane Katrina.

There are 17 parishes expected to

suffer significant damage as tropical force wind and heavy rainfall occur in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

And there are 33

Parishes that are affected by the evacuation of persons from the southeastern parishes of the state as we implement the Louisiana Shelter Operations Plan.

The White House statement - as quoted on Democratic Underground, because the White House link no longer works - list 40 parishes where aid is authorized

to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe.

Most of these parishes are in the last group from the Louisiana request. It's like they skipped two paragraphs.

Brownie reportedly told Congress today that Louisiana didn't ask for help in those parishes! Isn't lying to Congress a crime?

Another Take On Appointments

Molly Ivins points out that many of Shrub's appointments are not just incompetent, but in fact openly hostile to the agency or job they are appointed to. John Bolton at the UN is a good example, but she has more. She describes

...Bush appointees named during the administration's frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of "nanny-nanny boo-boo, I'll show you." Susan Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women's health care? Ha! We'll show her -- we'll put a [veterinarian] in charge, instead.

The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit. You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement -- Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.

Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers' health and safety.

Here's another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA. A lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute at the Council on Environmental Quality. And so on. And so forth.

The Federal Trade Commission was finally embarrassed enough by demands from Democratic governors to start an investigation into recent price gouging by oil companies. But the investigation will be headed by a former lawyer for ChevronTexaco. Is this fun or what? Nanny-nanny boo-boo.

(long quote because the column may cycle out of view)

They really do want to dismantle our government. They see no value in it. It's no longer a matter of rooting out "waste, fraud, and abuse," now they're cutting to the bone, and grinding the bones for fertilizer.

Bush Approval graph

From Professor Pollkatz's Pool of Polls



First posted 9/06/05. Bumped up because I like it.

The Baathist Party is Running Our Country

It's a little scary to think that people like Michael "Brownie" Brown have infested the government everywhere you look. Some of them may be there for a long time, like moles. The most troubling would be the ones in positions as inspectors general. Given that our domestic Baathist party is more keen on loyalty than competence, it will take a long time to recover from this.