i need a drink and a shower...

2006-06-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

President Nancy?

I’m afraid I must amend my earlier posting from 12/19/05 regarding Senate Pro Tem Ted Stevens’ likelihood, following the removal or resignations of Cheney/Bush, of assuming the Presidency.

I can’t believe that I and both my readers missed it, but if the Democrats are successful in returning to majority status in the House, current majority leader Nancy Pelosi of California would most likely become Speaker of the House. If the House drafts successful Articles against Cheney/Bush or otherwise manages to scare them out of office, Nancy Pelosi would become the first woman sworn in as President of these United States.

So forget all the crap about Hastert going down along with the entire administration, resulting in a ‘President Ted “BridgeBoy” Stevens.’

Won’t happen. And the alternative is actually quite super.

2006-02-01T10:07:00.000-08:00

From the "You've Got To Be F***ing Kidding Me" file:

I'm not sure how to comment on this Newsweek story. Do me a favor and click on it, read it, then hit the back button and revisit me.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11078560/site/newsweek/

So here's all I can say:

I think these people really are not aware of the number of gays and gay-rights supporters existing in the arts and specifically Hollywood. You can't throw a ball in this town without fifty fags flinching. I wonder what sort of coronary thrombosis would envelop middle America if they knew how many gays worked on The Passion of the Christ.

But fine. If this is the way you want it, fine. But if you're gonna boycott, then f***ing boycott, motherf***ers! Don't see our movies, don't read our books, don't watch our tv shows, don't get our haircuts, don't get our makeovers, don't buy our clothes, don't eat our food and don't read our blogs. And do it loudly in the name of Jesus. I promise you, when I get to heaven, he and I will look down on you (wayyy down) and we'll have a good laugh.

Next: my sister forwarded me these. Yeah, they're funny; but they're also quite poetic. Use them as counter-reasoning the next time you're trapped in an elevator with homohaters:

Top 10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is Wrong

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

2006-01-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

ACTION vs. REACTION

Congressional Democrats: It's time to stop reacting and start taking action.

It's not enough to simply vote against Sam Alito - or even to call for a filibuster. His confirmation is imminent. And, frankly, if handled properly, it could be a bigger political win for us than a filibuster or a thumbs down vote. Here's how:

Today's new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows us the following:

51% are more likely to vote for an anti-Bush candidate in congressional elections; 40% are likely to vote for a pro-Bush candidate.
52% consider his entire presidency a failure to date; 46% call it successful.
53% believe his administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
54% called Bush a divider, while 41% called him a uniter (for the first time since Bush took office in 2001)
54% say the economy is getting worse; 35% believe it's improving.
58% said Bush's second term has been a failure so far; 38% said they consider it a success.
62% (two-thirds of those surveyed in the poll) said they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States, while 35% said they're satisfied.
64% said things in the United States have gotten worse in the past five years, while 28% said things have improved.

Bush's approval rating remained at 43%, unchanged since mid-December; 54% disapprove of his job performance.

The translation: America is SO OVER George W. Bush. We're done. And we want a change. On top of that, America also seems to be done with the status quo. Snap em together and it's a sweet midterm election brand: "The Bush Status Quo."

If the Democrats are to position themselves as the anti-establishment party and the representatives of change, we have to - right now - take control of the framing of the argument.

No longer can we allow the Right Wing Spin Machine to define who we are and what we stand for. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY: According to these poll numbers, the Republicans have lost the right to define who they themselves are and what they themselves stand for.

And that is how we win. I want to see congressional Democrats calling the Alito confirmation a "victory for the Bush Status Quo" and "the same old Washington rubbish." I want to watch the Democrats quietly tsk-tsk-ing while the Repubs slap each other on the back for their big Supreme Court win.

If congressional Repubs weren't so blinded with absolute power that they could see what they were doing, they'd already be distancing themselves from Bush, in the form of questioning Alito's credentials and making a show of 'begrudgingly' voting to confirm him. Really, at the end of the day, most Americans don't really understand Supreme Court politics, and probably don't care. So by siding with Bush in the hopes that the Alito victory will bolster his approval ratings and lead them to wins in November, the Repubs are sadly mistaken. Bush is damaged goods. And unless there is a major turnaround in Iraq and/or gas prices before November, it will stay that way. Just look at those poll numbers.

These are the things Democrats like John Kerry understand. (now hear me out. I'm not a fan, but I like what he's doing on this.) We need to mount a small (albeit impossible) resistance to the Alito nomination - simply so that we'll have it on record come November who favors the Bush Status Quo and who stands in opposition to it.

It's time for real proactive leadership, Harry Reid. And if you're not up to it, let Kerry and Kennedy show you how it's done. The time for reaction is over; the Repubs' decadent overreaching has dealt us a terrific hand going into this election year - and we should embrace it with full force.

Let's take some initiative, let's take some risk and, by God, let's take back Congress.

ts

2006-01-04T15:41:00.000-08:00

Changing The Premise of the Argument

On a recent episode of The West Wing, VP candidate Leo McGarry (the late great John Spencer) was instructed by his press secretary what to do if he didn't want to respond to a difficult reporter query: "Don't accept the premise of the question."

It's an age-old deviation tactic which may or not be more clever than Reagan's famous hand-to-ear indication that he simply couldn't hear the question in question.

It's only logical, then, that the next step in the right-wing War on Information would be a shift from defense to offense: not simply rebuking the premise of an argument, but subversively changing the premise of an argument in the minds of the public. We've seen it several times before, but perhaps not as glaringly as with the Bush/Cheney response to the NSA wiretap scandal.

In recent weeks, the administration's retaliation to public backlash involving their decision to illegally eavesdrop on Americans has been clearly worded: These wiretaps are extremely necessary to protect America from its terrorist enemies and another 9/11.

I had an interesting conversation last week with someone I greatly respect who, disillusioned by the Iraq war and the scent of administration corruption, switched from his 2000 choice and voted for Kerry in 2004. He's been reading and watching the same press that I have and when the topic came up, he was in step with Bush/Cheney in his assertion that this wiretapping was and is absolutely vital to the security of this nation. Moreover, he was shocked that I wouldn't agree.

This struck me as odd - because I absolutely agree.

Why did he look at me, knowing I'm a progressive Democrat, and assume I don't agree that domestic intelligence plays a very important role in keeping our nation safe? The answer is that Bush, Cheney and their army of ditto-head automotons are trying to change the premise of the argument. And in my view, they are currently succeeding.

By phrasing their responses to criticisms as something like 'We know more about this than you or our political opponents; the enemy is out to get us and this intelligence helps us stop them', they are achieving two things. At once, they are playing on their strengths (their highest poll #s are for their handling of the 'War on Terror') and exploiting Americans' fears that another 9/11 could happen to them or their loved ones. The knee-jerk response we've seen from public polling is that a vast majority of us are saying 'Go ahead! Listen in to my calls if it will stop the terrorists!'

Well, of course.

Here's the problem: No one is arguing about the necessity of this eavesdropping data! (even though it is estimated that the NSA has eavesdropped on thousands of private conversations that are in no way connected to Al Qaeda and collected vast amounts of info unrelated to national security while the FBI has conducted extensive surveillance of the Vegan Community Project, PETA and a Catholic Workers group they describe as having a "semi-communist ideology"). Still, almost everyone agrees that this type of intel is helpful in predicting and coordinating responses to future attacks. The only group who might disagree would be the ACLU, but even they haven't come out against it.

What they and many Americans like me have come out against is the illegal manner in which the information is being obtained.

In our government, we have multiple levels of checks and balances which are intended to protect the rights of our citizens. There was a clear procedure in place (for over 20 years) to obtain domestic wiretap warrants. A simple legal check was put in place to prevent specifically what has been done - the executive branch overreaching and infringing upon citizens' rights.

Adding insult to injury, the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which oversees this process has only turned down 5 requests in it's entire existence (since 1978) - granting over 19,000. AND the already simple process of obtaining these permissions is simplified even further by allowing the wiretap to occur as long as the initiating agency applies for the warrant within 72 hours after starting the tap. Finally, this law already covers warrantless wiretaps in a time of war -- it limits them to the first 15 days after war is declared. Now even I think 15 days is a little crazy, and that may need to be revisited, but the important thing here is that all scenarios were considered and accounted for in writing this law, so unilaterally ignoring it just doesn't seem to make any sense whatsoever.

So then the big question on everyone's mind is "Why?" Why did Bush (Cheney) feel he needed to circumnavigate the law? Is there something about the data or the way it's being collected that would lead him to believe the court would deny the requests? And if that's the case - isn't it even more important that the court, whose sole purpose is to ensure the protection of American citizens' constitutional rights, be involved?

Of course the real answer may have less to do with the data mining and more to do with the Vice President's very public views about restoring executive powers that he feels have been curtailed since his old boss resigned his office in the disgraceful wake of a...? You got it: Wiretap scandal.

ts

2005-12-19T15:34:00.000-08:00

Picture it. It's 2006. Riding a populist wave of discontent and, yes, nausea, over the current Republican regime, Democrats sweep into majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Before their first session even begins, they begin drafting Articles of Impeachment against President W. As Rummy would say: Indictments? Sure. Presumptions of guilt? You bet. Removal from office? Not likely. Why? Because a tidal wave of resignations will hit Washington. So who will be left standing at the end of the day?

Here's the official Line of Presidential Succession, as it stands today, according to the 25th Amendment:

1. The Vice President Richard Cheney
2. Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
3. President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
4. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
5. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
6. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
7. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
8. Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
9. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns
10. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez*
11. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao*
12. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt
13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson
14. Secretary of Transportation Norman Yoshio Mineta
15. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman
16. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings
17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson
18. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff**

* Gutierrez and Chao were born outside the U.S. and are therefore ineligible to assume the Presidency.
** Legislation which would move the Sec. of Homeland Security to 8th, ahead of Sec. of the Interior, is pending approval in the House.

So how will this shake out?

I'll be exploring this in future posts. But we can be sure that if Bush goes down, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzales and possibly Chertoff go down as well. And Gutierrez and Chao are out. Which changes the map to look like this:

2. Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
3. President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
5. Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
8. Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton
9. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns
12. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt
13. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson
14. Secretary of Transportation Norman Yoshio Mineta
15. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman
16. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings
17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson

Now that's assuming that the Bush cronies depart from the pack to save their own hides. Since this is something not one but Powell has ever done, we can assume that Snow, Norton, Johanns, Leavitt, Jackson, Mineta, Bodman and Spellings will go down too. Changing the list to this:

2. Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
3. President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
17. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson

And I only left Colonel Nicholson on there because he's a veteran and I respect his service to our country. But wait: Wasn't he Chairman of the RNC during the 2000 election nightmare? Okay - that changes things:

2. Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
3. President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens

But of course, Hastert has his own legal troubles brewing due to his tight relationship with one Tom Delay. So let's assume he has to step down, and let's also assume that the Democrats stall the procedural vote to install Roy Blunt or Eric Cantor or David Dreier or one of those f**ks:

3. President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens

WHO THE HELL IS TED STEVENS? Two of his more interesting quotes:

"I am guilty of asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me."

"People who vote against this today are voting against me and I WILL NOT FORGET."

Ted's the guy who's building the infamous Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere," a $223 million (of your tax money) apportionment for the construction of a bridge as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge to Alaska's Gravina Island (population less than 50) from the megalopolis of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000).

So all this begs the question:
Why can't John Kerry just do it?

2005-10-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.arnoldsneighborhood.com/

2005-09-30T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hurricanes. Indictments. Conservative Confirmations. Gas prices. Dead soldiers.
I could use a good laugh right about now. How about you? --> click here

2005-09-20T15:55:00.000-07:00

Once again, I underestimated the opposition. Once again, I overestimated the diligence of the press. Check out this article from CNN.com -- and try to stifle the bile rising from your heart to your head.

2005-09-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

If John Kerry keeps talking like this, I'll vote for him whenever he asks and for any office he wants. Hell - if any of our people talk like this, I'll vote for them. 'WOW' is all I can muster.

And - it seems to specifically answer David Mamet's LA Times op-ed below...

Poker party
In politics as in poker, the only way to win is to seize the initiative. The Democrats need to make bold wagers or risk being rolled over again.
By David Mamet

ONE NEEDS TO know but three words to play poker: call, raise or fold.

Fold means keep the money, I'm out of the hand; call means to match your opponents' bet. That leaves raise, which is the only way to win at poker. The raiser puts his opponent on the defensive, seizing the initiative. Initiative is only important if one wants to win.

The military axiom is "he who imposes the terms of the battle imposes the terms of the peace." The gambling equivalent is: "Don't call unless you could raise"; that is, to merely match one's opponent's bet is effective only if it makes the opponent question the caller's motives. And that can only occur if the caller has acted aggressively enough in the past to cause his opponents to wonder if the mere call is a ruse de guerre.

If you are branded as passive, the table will roll right over you — your opponents will steal antes without fear. Why? Because the addicted caller has never exhibited what, in the wider world, is known as courage.

In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.

For example, take a player who has never acted with initiative — he has never raised,%

2005-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Benedict Arnold

So I was *inexplicably* watching CNN’s The Situation Room (oh god, let this show die quickly and take Blitzer with it. But long live the brilliant Jack Cafferty, who wisely commented on-air that the show is “like a telethon without the disease.”)

Anyway, my *barely-literate-but-you-can’t-tell-because-he-sounds-like-a-furby* governor was announcing his bid to be elected to his very own term in 2006. He cited his reasons and chief among them was that his work isn’t “done yet.” Same thing we heard outta bushie last year.

Aside: When did that become an acceptable excuse? It’s not like we’re in England -- we’re not springing elections on anyone, taking them by surprise. Arnold knew how long Gray Davis’ term was. Bush knew he had 4 years. If that’s the case, and they’re not ‘done yet,’ then there’s clearly a problem with their work. That’s how it works for me and any other employee during management review – why are these guys different? It’s a philosophical argument, obviously, and not a political one, but it bugs me nonetheless. When, in asking the question “Why haven’t you done anything yet?” did the answer “Because I haven’t done anything yet” become okay? Just curious.

But not my main point. Which is this:

Arnold said today that the system he promised he would fix is “still broken,” that our legislators toil in gridlock, keeping the people’s business undone. Yeah, that may have been true when he was elected – and may be occasionally true still – but this week, coming out of him, it sounds strangely hollow.

Perhaps because last week, in an historic move, our “broken” California legislature managed to cast off the shackles of this supposed “gridlock” of which Arnold speaks and passed legislation, of it’s own volition, to allow for same-sex marriage in our state.

Legislation that the “pro-gay-rights” Mr. Schwarzenegger has announced he will veto, citing Proposition 22 (which was somehow approved by Californians in March of 2000.) It says that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Of course, since then a lot of things have changed in the U.S. regarding this issue and now polls show Californians evenly split. Though you won’t hear Arnold mentioning that.

So when can we win, Arnold? You say the legislature can’t get anything done; but when they do, you simply jump in and undo it. Would you rather wait for some “activist judges” on the Cali Supreme Court to turn in a ruling, a la Massachusetts, requiring equal marriage rights? I’m quite sure you’d criticize them as well.

You were elected because you said you were against legislature gridlock, against voter-direct propositions, and for gay-rights.

Last week, you made fools of us all.

... and this week you want re-election?

Is Arnold Schwarzenegger really the candidate for change and progress that he claims to be? Or is Arnold, in fact, pulling the wool over the eyes of Californians with his all too true lies?

2005-09-15T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wow. I'm not really sure how to react to this yet, but check out CNN's top headline (3:00pm 9/15). I can't remember the last time I saw a headline story from a major news outlet (besides Fox) that read like an editorial. The scary thing is -- this is not editorial. These are the facts. And this may be the dawn of a new day for the mainstream press... Dare we dream??

2005-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the bad link on "Impeach, Remove, Jail" - I've corrected it! Now check it out!!
-t

2005-09-14T10:34:00.001-07:00

"There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America."
- President Bill Clinton

A couple of Katrinagate tid-bits:

Caught this at the democracyforcalifornia blog --> interesting to say the least. It's a list of FEMA's blocking of relief efforts.

And go to Heart, Soul & Humor to see a great Washington Post op-ed declaring the end of the "Bush Era." Whew!

This is from the Stephanie Miller site. It's an indictment of the Bush government's non-response to the flood called "Impeach, Remove, Jail" -- what's great is that it's written by my good friend Viggo Mortensen. Scroll about halfway down the page to check it.

And this is just one for the history books: Keith Olberman

2005-09-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

OH MY GOD.

I did it again.

I went out this morning to pick up razors and came back with everything BUT razors. So I used one of the Pink Death razors again and - NO JOKE - CUT OPEN THE EXACT SAME PART OF MY NOSTRIL. At least I don't have to go in to work, since it's Sunday. DAMN YOU, BRYN!!!!!

Oh - and - George Stephanopolous had Barack Obama on this morning. I really like that guy (Obama). George was trying to corner him into denouncing some Howard Dean comments and he wouldn't do it. In fact, he essentially repeated what Dean said, but made it more politically palatable. He needs to run in '08 before he amasses to long a voting record.

Who wouldn't love to see a Vice President Obama running for his party's presidential nomination in 2016? Hm?

2005-09-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

“The Pink Death”

Now I want to make this perfectly clear: I was not shaving my nose.

The truth is that I had run out of Mach-19 blades or whatever monstrosity Proctor & Gamble managed to sell me on last month. Of course, some days I don’t even bother to shave for work (I call those days ‘Mon’days and often ‘Tues’days), but today we have an important corporate bigwig in the office and, with a promotion/raise creeping over the horizon, I wisely decided on looking my best.

The only alternative I had in my cupboard was a package of bright pink Lady Schick disposable razors that Rich Fromm’s wife was kind enough to leave in my care after a visit earlier this year when they were still, inexplicably, setting off alarms at LAX. What the hell, right? A blade’s a blade, right?

…I’m sure many of you with wives and girlfriends have been in this situation before and you know exactly where this is going, but suffice it so say, this is new territory for me…

Anyway – I lathered up my face with a very manly blue foaming gel, ran some hot water and slowly began the work with the device I will now refer to as “Pink Death.”

Imagine my surprise to find a shave not unlike what I have been consistently achieving with my 37-blade manly-man razor! Smooth and gentle, like a summer breeze caressing my bare and tingling flesh… So what if it’s slim, curved and pink (watch yourself). A girl, er, GUY could get used to this…!

Then, when I was casually removing the shadow above my upper lip, the bitch took a chunk out of my left nostril.

AND, OH, HOW IT BLED.

Now, I’ve never had trouble clotting before, so I was terrified – which obviously raised my blood pressure and didn’t help the situation AT ALL.

I got to work a half hour late looking like an idiot with a Star Wars band-aid stretched precariously from under my eye, across half my nose and inside my right nostril; I mean, if I’m not mistaken, this thing defied the thermodynamic arrow of time… (Thank God that, since it's theoretically impossible for light to escape the event horizon, there are, as yet, no photos.)

Damn you, Bryn Boice. Damn you.

2005-09-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

ATTENTION 527s:

Leave John Roberts alone. He’s the best we could’ve hoped for. Seriously. And it’s only fair - we got Ginsburg and Breyer under Clinton. Now it’s their turn. Besides, the guy really isn’t all that bad, as conservatives go.

I turned on the TV this morning and saw an ad from a 527 group which made Roberts out to be an anti-choice, anti-gay radical who is determined to reign in the individual rights of citizens and empower the high court even more than his predecessor. Of course, for all I know, that may be true – but what bothers me is the way the ad looks and smells like red meat propaganda designed to inflame the senses and promote cash donation, a la every GOP or swiftboat vets advert of 2004. Which leads me to my two points:

Point the First: Can the ads. We’re not going to beat them by behaving like them. (I know it’s a cliché, and one that, at first, doesn’t seem all that accurate. After all, adopting some of the enemy’s **damn clever** Rove-ian techniques could really get the job done. Whatever it takes to win, right? Well, no.) We may win in the short term, but we would lose who we are and what we stand for and, in war, that can never be an acceptable sacrifice. That kind of loss will haunt us even after we’re all dead.

Point the Second: Everybody lay off Roberts, dammit. Not because we shouldn’t be concerned, not because we shouldn’t ask the questions, not because we’re afraid of how the Rove slander-machine will retaliate – but because the American people are tired of watching us fight for the sake of fighting. Especially now during an enormous national crisis. It comes off as catty and without merit and will only serve to quickly squander any political capital the administration’s floundering of Katrina and Iraq have gotten us lately.

Attention 527s - take a cue from our congressional leaders, who, for once, have managed to carve out the proper political approach to a potentially volatile situation: Moderation, humility and political common sense. They know that John Roberts is a red-herring designed to trap us. We’re meant to take the bait and attack him hard so that when the real fight hits us – Bushie’s next high court pick – we’ll no longer have the credibility to launch an assault in the eyes of the public.

So cool your jets and save some fuel for the big one.

2005-09-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

THE BIG EASY COUP D’ÉTAT

Make no mistake - what we’ve witnessed over the past week+ is bigger than a natural disaster, bigger than a national tragedy, bigger than murder or even assassination and much, much bigger than a miscalculation or failure of government. What we’ve been witness to is nothing short of a coup d’état.

I will tell you why.

First off – the murder. I won’t spend a lot of time here because if you don’t agree that it’s murder when people die because a levee built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane is washed out by the Category 5 hurricane that every reputable scientist, the city and state governments and this nation’s great Army had, for years, predicted would strike, then you’re crazier than Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld. If you can’t figure out that it’s a crime for a government with impenetrable ties to every pollutant-creating energy corporation to refuse to subscribe to the basic scientific notion that the globe is warming, causing gulf waters to heat up and allow for bigger and stronger hurricanes to hit and devastate those regions of our country, then you have no business reading this blog and should go back to whatever cousin you were marrying.

My God, it took 4 days for a federal response. 4 days. 4 long, grueling days for some. For others, the last 4 days of their life.

I watched a news story last night in which the singer Harry Connick, Jr., because no one else was doing it, was personally pulling a boat through the submerged streets of New Orleans and rescuing survivors. This was coupled with another report (don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one; it bears repeating) about a group of neighborhood kids who got together and set up a lemonade stand to benefit victims of the flood. Yesterday morning I read in the LA Times about the kids in New Jersey who sold $50 muffins and $250 cookies with all proceeds going (guess where!), while in the background, our President was on TV discussing how HE HIMSELF is going to lead the investigation into “what went right and what went wrong” in the relief effort. Though, at first, I was enraged that anyone would suggest that we need to investigate to find out “what went wrong” (the entire world has seen WHAT went wrong, Mr. President, what we are desperate to know is WHO is responsible), I was moderately impressed at the balls it took for this guy to admit that it would take an in-depth investigation to uncover “what went right.” Though, since the comment actually made him appear weak and stupid, I have a sneaking suspicion that, today, like most days, Herr President’s balls took a backseat to a smaller part of his anatomy - his brain.

Murder, yes. But assassination? Coup d’état? Read on.

Did anyone catch the list of Federal Emergency Areas published yesterday? This one takes some ’splainin’. You see, nearly 2 million people have been evacuated from the gulf area and sent elsewhere (the elsewhere is one of the few things FEMA is actually coordinating); and at a certain point when a certain number of evacuees are introduced into another environment, that environment is added to a list of Federal Emergency Areas. This frees up our taxpayer dollars from bureaucratic restraint and allows them to be spent assisting evacuees who have been shipped into these other states. Now take a look at the list of the “emergency areas” where gulf coast residents have been relocated – as of yesterday:

Arkansas
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Oklahoma
North Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
West Virginia

At first blush, not much to write home about. But wait a minute. West Virginia and Utah? Has FEMA really been sending these people to West Virginia and Utah? Doesn’t seem like they’d be the most convenient spots to route evacuees, does it? Well, no. Not unless you’re a federal agency under the thumb of a White House hell-bent on redistricting the entire country and reformulating the electoral map until Republican victories are inevitable everywhere. Sure, Louisiana loves George Bush, and has proven it in 2000 and 2004 with wide victory margins for the President. But with a Democratic governor, a popular Democratic senior senator, 2 popular Democratic congressmen and a bevy of Democratic local government officials, next year’s midterm elections, let alone 2008, might not have looked so good for the GOP. Thank goodness Katrina blew into town and finally solidified the Republican stranglehold on the south.
With all those Democratic voters being shipped off to heavily red states, that’s at least one less headache this administration will have to put up with. Maybe with the threat of losing a couple of elections eradicated, they can focus on pulling our sick, wheelchair-bound grandmothers out through their Biloxi roofs and bussing them to their new lives in West Virginia or Utah where their votes can’t possibly make a difference ever again to the ruling party.

My fellow citizens, when even one person is murdered for political ideals in a manner that is intended to empower the murderer(s), it is, by definition, coup d’état.

But this was AT BEST a coup. If there is any justice, history will more accurately remember it as genocide and treason, the likes of which Saddam Hussein himself daren’t have dreamed.

There was a time when America was the moral compass of this world. People from all across the globe looked upon our nation as a beacon of hope and prosperity. Remember that fact while you look at the pictures on your televisions tonight. Remember it while you listen to the stories of those who were left behind on the gulf coast, who had already been left behind by a government that stole their jobs and kept them in poverty, preventing the possibility of escape from the flood; while you add one or ten or twenty more dead American soldiers and countless dead Iraqi civilians into your nightly prayers; while you pump a $3 gallon of gasoline into your car as the President holds hands with the Saudi Royal Family and a whole slew of oil industry execs; while you’re spilling your thoughts out into a blog because you’re disgusted to hear that, although they can’t seem to get trucks and food, let alone dollars, into the city of New Orleans, they can, within two days, get Halliburton a signed contract and truckloads of cash to rebuild the decimated oil refineries.

MY GOD. What have we become?

That’s not the America I stand for. Something else has taken over here - something rotten and evil. And it MUST be routed out. Now and for good.

DO SOMETHING. You and I are as responsible as anyone.