May 28 2008
By now, we all know that former Press Secretary Scott McClellan is publishing a book and apparently telling some truth about George Bush and his minions. Karl Rove doesn’t like it:
“First of all, this doesn’t sound like Scott. It really doesn’t,” he said. “Not the Scott McClellan I’ve known for a long time. Second of all, it sounds like somebody else. It sounds like a left-wing blogger.“
White House Reacts Angrily to Former Aide’s Book
Also on Daily Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…
May 28 2008
As in “only” Buchenwald, where a paltry 56,000 or so people lost their lives.
8,483 by gunshot… 1,100 by hanging… roughly 13,500 suffocating or starving in transport, stuffed into train cars like live-stock.
The rest worked to death or expired from typhoid, there bodies stacked in neat little piles.
Don’t believe me?
Here, let me show you the photos…
May 28 2008
Resources Scarce, Homelessness Persists in New Orleans
By Shaila Dewan, The New York Times
Mayor C. Ray Nagin recently suggested a way to reduce this city’s post-Katrina homeless population: give them one-way bus tickets out of town.
Mr. Nagin later insisted the off-the-cuff proposal was just a joke. But he has portrayed the dozens of people camped in a tent city under a freeway overpass near Canal Street as recalcitrant drug and alcohol abusers who refuse shelter, give passers-by the finger and, worst of all, hail from somewhere else.
While many of the homeless do have addiction problems or mental illness, a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Not far from the French Quarter, flanking Canal Street on Claiborne Avenue, they are living inside a long corridor formed not of walls and a roof but of the thick stench of human waste and sweat tinged with alcohol, crack and desperation.
Read the whole article. What we’ve let New Orleans become is to our nation’s shame.
Four at Four continues with stories about Democrats, climate change, and the monkeys that will replace us all.
May 28 2008
Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11. Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption. It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts. But most of all, it is a search for identity and meaning in an empty world.
Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb, we did not know our mother’s face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father’s heart? Which of us has not remained prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? ~Thomas Wolfe
All installments are available for reading here on Docudharma’s Series page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.
May 28 2008
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
Guess what. The traditional media have discovered the earth shaking news that their op-ed pages are too male and too white. Doh. Like most readers didn’t realize that?
Nicholas Kristof today reports that the Washington Post’s ombudsperson has written that op-ed pages are too male and too white:
Deborah Howell, the ombudsman of The Washington Post, has an interesting column looking at the diversity – or, rather, lack of diversity – on the op-ed page of the Post. She begins:
The Post’s op-ed page is too male and too white. And there aren’t a lot of youthful opinions, either.
I have nothing against older white men; I’m married to one. And the nation’s power structure, often represented in Post op-eds, is white, male and at least middle-aged. But a 21st-century op-ed page needs more diversity.
The 2008 numbers as of Wednesday: 654 op-ed pieces – 575 by men, 79 by women and about 80 by minorities. The lack of diversity is partly a matter of tradition; The Post’s longtime stable of regular columnists consists overwhelmingly of older white men.
May 28 2008
So the bottom line is that of a total of approximately 2,535 days as president, most of them during a time of war, Bush spent all or a part or 908 days, an incredible 36 percent of his time, on vacation or at retreat places. Hard to believe, but true. Nine hundred and eight days is two and a half years of Bush’s presidency. Two and a half years of the less than seven years of his presidency in which his main goal was to kick back and have fun.
.A great read from Vincent Bugliosi at HuffPo
Most of us agree that he should spend even more time on vacation; be it in Crawford, Paraguay or Leavenworth, but when many American’s have sacrificed their lives, family members and large sums of tax dollars to fund this fool’s fantasy, he has been working on “clearing my mind”. I would include beautiful as an adjective but then it wouldn’t be a direct quote, but I’m sure astute readers here will make the genetic connection.
The brush clearin’, bike ridin’, segway fallin’, perch fishin’ golfin’, joggin’ CIC (Clown-in-Chief) needs to “clear his mind”.
In fact, he himself admitted to the magazine Runners World (August 23, 2002) that after the Afghanistan war began: “I have been running with a little more intensity . . . It helps me to clear my mind.”
…
“It’s interesting that my times have become faster . . . For me, the psychological benefit [in running] is enormous. You tend to forget everything that’s going on in your mind and just concentrate on the time and distance.”
May 28 2008
YEAH, I know! Fooled you, huh? NOT! Bush telling the truth is akin to Sky = ruby red, Water = dry, Republicans = compassionate conservatives, etc.
In ANOTHER telling tale of BushCo malfeasance, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan writes in his soon to be released book that Bush and his advisers used pure propaganda on the run up to the war with Iraq and that they spent the first week of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy in complete denial.
From CNN:
The spokesman who defended President Bush’s policies through Hurricane Katrina and the early years of the Iraq war is now blasting his former employers, saying the Bush administration became mired in propaganda and political spin and at times played loose with the truth.
AT TIMES played loose with the truth, Scottie? That may be the understatement of our new century!
In excerpts from a 341-page book to be released Monday, Scott McClellan writes on Iraq that Bush “and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.”
“[I]n this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security,” McClellan wrote.
McClellan also sharply criticizes the administration on its handling of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency,” he wrote. “Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term.”
May 28 2008
On Wednesday, May 28 (tonight) at 8:00 p.m. EST/5:00 p.m. PST my publisher is hosting an on-line chat for the release of my second novel, Skinny Berry.
For those unfamiliar with my work, I think it is a bit of a mix between John Grisham, Michael Crichton, Carl Hiassen and Ayn Rand (if only she were progressive).
This particular novel is a fictional look at the potential problems with the introduction of genetically modified organisms into our food supply. My publisher will be giving away a few copies of the book during the on-line chat, so if you haven’t bought the book yet, this might be a good chance to get a copy at the rock bottom price of $0.
May 28 2008
The Morning News is an Open Thread
| From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments
By JOHN MORENO GONZALES, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago
| BAY ST. LOUIS, MISS. – The anguish of Hurricane Katrina should have ended for Gina Bouffanie and her daughter when they left their FEMA trailer. But with each hospital visit and each labored breath her child takes, the young mother fears it has just begun.
“It’s just the sickness. I can’t get rid of it. It just keeps coming back,” said Bouffanie, 27, who was pregnant with her now 15-month-old daughter, Lexi, while living in the trailer. “I’m just like, `Oh God, I wish like this would stop.’ If I had known it would get her sick, I wouldn’t have stayed in the trailer for so long.” The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device. |
May 28 2008
 Muse in the Morning |
Muse in the Morning |
Muse in the Morning |
 Groove Thing
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Please join us on the inside to celebrate, venerate, regenerate and/or motivate our muses.
May 28 2008
“Yeah!! Yeah, it’s like that, baby!”
Alan’s voice rang with defiant glee through the ragged PA speakers as we bashed out the last notes of “Eat Shit And Die” from the center stage of my old high school’s main hall. Our frontmanly singer-guitarist’s enthusiasm was met with scattered applause and semi-comprehension from the inert mob of teenagers below, who seemed to wonder why their lunch hour was being interrupted by an assault of Old Dead Sixties Music. Alan sensed that his precious span of glory was almost over, and he wasn’t gonna go without a fight.