Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
September 12, 2005
Hunting Season

Dan Froomkin digests the current flurry of Bush Blew It reportings.
His summary:

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don’t emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies — the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department — has failed a big test.

This does fit my views on Bush. That man has some dangerous and serious defects.

But those reporters writing these pieces work with the White House every day. They have known Bush’s style and problems for years. So why didn´t they tell us? And why do they tell their stories now? Who has opened the hunting season?

Comments

So apparently one of the reasons that the Federal Government didn’t respond immediately is that the Blanco left her request for help as voice mail because she couldn’t get Bush on the phone. The Governor of a state in the middle of a disastrous emergency couldn’t get the President of the United States on the phone. Heck, he wasn’t even on vacation any more. Probably taking a nap.

Posted by: Bob Munck | Sep 12 2005 19:02 utc | 1

Brown ‘takes a bullet’ for the president

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 12 2005 19:17 utc | 2

I’m sure this hunting season will be nothing like
last, Hunting season

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 12 2005 19:23 utc | 3

I would say that the following paragraph has a great deal to do with what is coming out now.

And as if the West Wing were suddenly snakebit, his franchise player, senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, was on the disabled list for part of last week, working from home after being briefly hospitalized with painful kidney stones

besides being really pissed off for having to cut his vacation short by two days, he had the added stress of not having his brain with him. You might remember one of the first things he did was call on his dad and Bill Clinton to come help him too. The petulant little child just can’t stand to have to actually work. Add all these things together and the difficulty in doing nose candy in between interviews and you can imagine he is a little bitchy at times. poor fellow.

Posted by: dan of steele | Sep 12 2005 19:37 utc | 4

While all the attention regarding Bush, Hurricane Relief and the prevailing wage issue, no one is talking about the 35 puppet masters er, I mean…. republicans (below)who co-signed the letter requesting Bush issue the proclamation. Let’s start talking about THEM, since Bush can’t be re-elected anyway. At least not yet. Maybe that’s his next proclamation….
From Sweeney’s press office:
Per your request, attached is a copy of the letter that was sent to President Bush last week. I am including a link to a recent press release on this issue and a list of the Members who signed the letter. Please let me know if you need anything additional.
– Tom Feeney
– Jeff Flake
– Marilyn Musgrave
– Sam Johnson
– Jeff Miller
– Todd Tiahrt
– Gresham Barrett
– Steve King
– Patrick McHenry
– John Shadegg
– Wally Herger
– Virgil Goode
– Tom Tancredo
– Mike Pence
– Sue Myrick
– Lynn Westmoreland
– Phil Gingrey
– John Kline
– Louie Gohmert
– Rob Bishop
– Frank Lucas
– John Culberson
– Gil Gutknecht
– Roger Wicker
– Joe Barton
– Ernie Istook
– Jim Ryun
– Joe Pitts
– Scott Garrett
– John Doolittle
– Henry Brown, Jr.
– Jeb Hensarling
– Virginia Foxx
– Steve Chabot
– Joe Wilson
Shannon Corrado
Press Secretary
Congressman Tom Feeney
407-208-1106
407-208-1108 (fax)
http://www.house.gov/feeney

Posted by: VesicaPiscis | Sep 12 2005 19:45 utc | 5

The hunting season opened November 2000, when reporters asked Bush
if he wasn’t worried about early reports calling Florida for Gore.
GW smirked his smirk, and waved his tra-la hands, then the camera panned to Barbara pitched forward she was laughing so hard, then George Sr cracked his best, ‘It’s in the bag, Jeb’ mafiosa smile.
It’s all Tinkerbelle and pixie dust after that. The only thing GW’s pissed over now is he’s gonna have to swallow a belly-full of SCOTUS,
and then trencher-board through a burnt Fitzgerald roast in October.
By Christmas he’ll be sitting on juicy war/oil royalties and options.
From then ’til 2008, it’s crony-welfare laissez le bon temps rollez.

Posted by: tante aime | Sep 12 2005 19:51 utc | 6

Ms Bumiller apparently didn’t get the word:
…Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants.
—————————–
Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: September 10, 2005
“He’s not a screamer,” a senior aide said of the president. But Mr. Bush, angry, directed the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to find out what was going on

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 12 2005 20:39 utc | 7

You ask a very good question. They’re known about this all along, but it wasn’t that long ago that he was riding high with 70% or 80% poll ratings. Now he’s down to about 40%, the shit has hit the fan with Katrina, and they’re a little more comfortable in writing the reality of the Bush regime, rather than the heretofore myth of the Bush presidency. The real question is: How long will it last, and what can the Democrats do to exploit that? After all, we’re still over a year away from the midterm elections.

Posted by: Phil from New York | Sep 12 2005 20:56 utc | 8

Mr. mrblifil, over at kos asks, [just] WHO THE FUCK IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY? I think most of us know, but still “Oblivious, In Denial, is Dangerous.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 12 2005 21:50 utc | 9

If you watch the CNN video, the President is perfectly at ease,
and well within his rights, if you understand chain of command,
to say, “I’ll need to talk to Micheal Chertoff”. Remember, Brown
reports to Chertoff, not to Bush. Brown is a grease-stain on
Chertoff’s jack-boot, and now you know where to point the finger.
You’re over-spinning this one. Cut back to decaf for a day or two.
Otherwise they’ll refer to blogs as point-and-click train wrecks.

Posted by: tante aime | Sep 12 2005 22:11 utc | 10

Simon Schama is shooting at the turkey, too – not with the rage many Americans express, but from the devastating perspective of a good historian writing about what he thinks is a turning point. Oh please, oh, please…

Posted by: teuton | Sep 12 2005 22:50 utc | 11

Is billmon’s web server down. He’s not responding to pings? Anybody know about this?

Posted by: patience | Sep 12 2005 23:50 utc | 12

Hellooowww-could this last two weeks have been a testimony on how badly this president needs his Rove. This was Rove (Cheney) through and through. You think you are the President Georgie, think again? We leave you on your own and look what a complete fuck up takes place. You think Rove or I are going down for Plame, think again College Cheerleader Boy. You fuck with us and we will leave on the flooded levees of New Orleans buddy boy. So you better wake up about this Federal Investigation of the Plame Thing, and make sure you so the right thing, or George-we’re leaving you-got it!!!

Posted by: Mary | Sep 13 2005 1:09 utc | 13

this is the living end,
but it’s still living.
(Birthday Party, “Dead Song”)

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 13 2005 2:09 utc | 14

Posted by: teuton | Sep 12, 2005 6:50:51 PM | #

Simon Schama is shooting at the turkey, too – not with the rage many Americans express, but from the devastating perspective of a good historian writing about what he thinks is a turning point. Oh please, oh, please…

Here’s another POV you may be interested in:
NO DIRECTION HOME

Posted by: pb | Sep 13 2005 2:39 utc | 15

DoS wrote:
The petulant little child just can’t stand to have to actually work.
Don’t you get it – he is Not Capable of It. His brains are too scrambled w/learning disabilities, drugs etc. He can neither read -more than 1 paragraph – nor concentrate. He knows nothing. All he is capable of doing is being a country club bartender/glad hander like w/the baseball team. That’s it. He’s not capable of thought or planning, and has no knowledge since he cannot read books! Cheers 🙂
What I want to know is doesn’t it have Real Implications for the WaPo to actually publish this:
He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read.
How can they finally admit this & leave them in Power?Seriously. Does anyone else think this could be a prelude to a change? Are there any adults around? How can they leave an Admin. in power that’s bankrupting the country & about to Nuke Iran?
More Good News. Santa Cruz, Ca., DeA-‘s home, is the firs city in the Nation to have their City Council vote to Impeach. If this sprung up like wildfire around the country, perhaps some Adults would crawl to the plate somewhere somehow. But they better do it quickly. Anyone remember their ratings on 9/10/01??

Posted by: jj | Sep 13 2005 3:48 utc | 16

Sorry Teuton, but Chris Floyd is much closer to the truth than Schama. Katrina caught Bush with his pants around his ankles and gave him a blow job while the whole world watched, but the True Believers turned away. With Rove out of action, they were worried for a while. You could see it on their faces; as indignation rose with Katrina’s flood waters, so did their own doubts. Inexplicably, the sources that had never failed them didn’t immediately provide the tales and bromides necessary to hold back the doubt and it seemed possible for a short time that Katrina might breech some of their internal levees. Then Rove came back and told them what to say and believe and Katrina passed leaving their personal Potemkin houses still standing, high and dry.
I live among these people. For them, all is still well and Bush is doing a heck of a job.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Sep 13 2005 4:06 utc | 17

Good for them LonesomeG. But do check out Paul Craig Robert’s new piece on Katrina. He Gets It & Doesn’t mince words – unlike, say, members of the JackAss Party.
The New Orleans catastrophe is inexplicable.
FEMA’s slow response is a mystery.
Never before has federal funding for work by the US Corps of Engineers on the New Orleans levees and for the congressionally authorized Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA) been curtailed in the face of dire expert warnings of the consequence.
The Department of Homeland Security and FEMA knew days in advance that Hurricane Katrina was threatening the Gulf coast of the US. Yet, the normal advance preparations were not undertaken.


Whether or not there are grounds for suspicion of the extraordinary federal failure in New Orleans, it is certain that federal bureaucracies will take advantage of the situation to grab more powers in behalf of their own agendas.
Private parties already are doing so. The New Orleans power elite sees in the recent US Supreme Court Kelo decision, which permits the use of eminent domain to serve private interests, a chance to rebuild New Orleans in their own image.
In the September 8 Wall Street Journal, Christopher Cooper (“Old Line Families Plot the Future”) quotes members of the power elite, who admit they are mapping out a new city that will not restore the old order: “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically,” says James Reiss. “I’m not just speaking for myself here. The way we’ve been living is not going to happen again.”
The Journal’s report brings to light that the “teeming (black) underclass,” which guarantees Democratic control of New Orleans, is one part of the old order that is not slated for renewal. In other words, federal failure in New Orleans plus Kelo equals ethnic cleansing of a large historic American city.
With 40 members of the New Orleans power elite having seized the opportunity to meet in Dallas on September 9 “to begin mapping out a future for the city,” you can bet federal agencies will use the same opportunity to grab heightened powers. The rights that protect US citizens from government power are rapidly disappearing if not already lost. This is the real crisis faced by the vast majority of Americans who are not a part of the power elite.
In the end not even the power elite will be safe. Hitler exterminated his own Brownshirts before he went to work on the Jews, and Stalin exterminated the Bolshevik heros of the Russian Revolution. Once power is unaccountable, it becomes the possession of the most ruthless. Loyal party membership protected neither the Brownshirts nor the Bolsheviks. And it will not protect Bush’s Republican apologists.

Power Grab in N.O.

Posted by: jj | Sep 13 2005 4:22 utc | 18

Bush did not blew it.
Well, maybe, at first, a little.
And maqybe Bush himself, the sock puppet.
But overall, the “Katrina exercise” to quote our Vice-Blofeld, has been a smashing success, to the extent of making barrels of lemonade with the lemons nature handed BushCo.
Shorter version:
– NO has been ethnically cleansed for good (“Hallelujah!”)
– Reconstruction %% will flow in friendly pockets (coughHaliburtoncough)
– new eminent domain interpretation will enable to reconstruct a proper rich/white NO (one that will know how to vote correctly)
– poverty + new bankruptcy laws will drive the lumpen into the arms of the Army recruiters (“why should they get benefits if they don’t enlist” talking point)
– hopefully, blacks will riot and/or loot somewhere, some more, so that white folks who were starting to be lose confidence in the “Kill ’em Sand Niggers” Operation can be properly terrified again and made to vote White Power in ’06 and ’08.
If you call this a FAILURE, I have a bridge in NO I’d like to sell you.
The biggest trump card of the Right has is to make all the well-meaning naive folks like Armando on Kos feel like they’re FAILING when in fact, *by their own standards*, they’re wildly SUCCEEDING.
To quote “MADE IN CANADA” (a TV series), “I think this went rather well, don’t you?”

Posted by: Lupin | Sep 13 2005 5:57 utc | 19

I’m liking Paul Craig Roberts more in the last few months than I ever thought I would…

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 13 2005 5:59 utc | 20

“Pray with me Henry”

Posted by: R.L. | Sep 13 2005 6:09 utc | 21

LOL…lupin…..thats the first time i’ve heard anyone quote that program. it is one of my faves. quite bizarre. good old canuck humour!

Posted by: lenin’s ghost | Sep 13 2005 6:25 utc | 22

RL–
Are we down on our knees yet?

Posted by: RossK | Sep 13 2005 7:06 utc | 23

pb and lonesomeG – if it is indeed as you argue and bushco can no longer be held accountable on anything, then may whatever god you believe in help your country. I haven’t been to the US for a few years now and have to rely on what I’m told by people here and elsewhere. Yet, having watched the heart-rending pictures from NO, it’s hard for me to believe that this is just another political and business opportunity for the ones in power.
Viewing the Katrina desaster as a chance to push further one’s political and economic agenda – that is corruption if ever I saw it. I have met too many good and honest people in the US to believe that this can remain in place, the media machine notwithstanding. Or does it really all have to do down in order to get better? How deep will the US of A have to sink, and how much will an anxious world be forced to suffer the consequences of the empire looking at itself in the mirror?

Posted by: teuton | Sep 13 2005 7:18 utc | 24

I’m gonna go a little bit further than Teuton here.
*If* indeed this won’t change anything and there’ll still be half the American people worshipping a monkey, then the singly only way to end this is clear. Most people can see what it’ll be like, in a little unnoticed German movie called Downfall, a little movie that deals with delusion of grandeur, bunker mentality, and leaders who “yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants”. In which case learning Chinese might be a good idea in the near future.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 13 2005 7:51 utc | 25

Altho it is tempting for more than just the usual Stalinists to see the New Orleans disaster in a positive light given the blowback on BushCo the extent to which many are embracing this concept is disturbing.
If the needless deaths of thousands of poor people is seen as the lever to remove this corrupt regime then those operating this lever are as degenerate as BushCo.
There are a great many lessons to be taken from this disaster and the public humiliation of an already failed regime should be one of the least important.
I know I’ll sound like a stuck record here but the polls that show the majority of white Amerikans believe that race wasn’t a factor in the appalling response informs that there is a long way to go before the US can be considered to be a sane and civilised society free from slavery. However to argue that point in detail in here would be the ethical equivalent of using this event as a stick to beat BushCo with so maybe I’ll post the thousands of words of horror and invective I have spewed out in the last week at another time.
Another ‘small’ issue is that while all of this has been going on another town in Iraq has been ‘Fallujahed’ In other words the deaths of thousands of innocents has been used as a cover for the deliberate slaughter of more innocents.
Even Israel has been using Katrina as camoflage for it’s next piece of spin.
When they pulled out of Gaza all the synagogues were left intact. Of course homes hospitals sports centres anything that maybe useful for Palestinians were destroyed. At a later date when there is a lull in news doubtless the zionist machine will push out images of those despicable Palestinians being so petty as to wreck synagogues. Now tell me they aren’t anti-semetic will be that sub-text!
The Palestinians are sensitive to this danger and have moved to demolish the synagogues immediately whilst the US is distracted by New Orleans. This has earned them stories about “ripping out anything whether nailed down or not to sell to the highest bidder”. But I guess that the Palestinians have come to expect that the world see them as sand n…..s so they will wear that in preference to what could happen later in a news lull.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Sep 13 2005 8:27 utc | 26

What bugs me is the strained optimism that this time,-this time, their incompetence has been revealed! We’re watching the beginning of their end, or at least the beginning of the beginning! They can‘t survive this crash and burn! Shhhw. Where is even the tiniest bit of evidence that this is true? Headlines about relief pouring in are gleefully militarizing whole thing, fawning interviews with the “cigar-chomping” general, we just needed to get the “relief” people out of the way and let the military do its job. The memories will have been processed in three weeks tops and Fox will be writing the script again. I’m weary of reading people who haven’t gotten their heads around this yet. We still badly need coping narratives and, yes, “hope,” but this fantasy that the extremity of the situation will eventually be self-correcting is simply dysfunctional.
In social psychology it’s called the “just world hypothesis,
” the assumption that people who have bad things happen to them must somehow deserve it. I just spent a two-hour conversation with H. about her corporate worklife, and we came to a consensus about something identifiable and toxic about the generation that has come up behind us. They don’t worry about the future much–though they have reason to–because they don’t believe that the bad things happening to people around them will ever happen to them. And they preserve this fantasy with a very obvious mechanism: if something bad happens to someone they know, they cautiously retract their social ties to that person. As if such people are tainted by some unidentifiable loserhood which, like a contagion, can be avoided if kept at a careful distance or propitated with one or another talisman.
Of all the things I’ve read in my career, the scene that has been in the forefront of my mind for the last year or two is of all things a fabular scene from Richard Adam’s lapine fantasy Watership Down. a book I haven’t read since the ninth grade. It’s the scene concerning Cowslip’s warren, the tribe of decadent “secular” rabbits who live in lettuce-rich luxury, reject their ancestral trickster-hero mythology, write tragic poems about accepting their fate, and otherwise “cultivate” themselves in ways that puzzle our workin’-class rabbit heroes on the run.
They have one particularly suspicious eccentricity. Whenever they are asked casually about someone else’s whereabouts–“Where’s Fluffy?”–they will dodge the question and quickly change the subject. It turns out that the warren’s bountiful supply of lettuce is bait, and that the farmer-provider sets traps randomly so that a certain number of rabbits are harvested from time to time. That’s why the rabbits who live there will always change the subject if you ask where someone is. Because that rabbit might have permanently disappeared without notice, and no one wants to think about that.
The indictment is very specific: instead of collectively leaving the warren when they found out it was a death trap, the rabbits accepted the material “wealth” and stayed, each of them banking on the odds that they wouldn’t be one of the harvested rabbits. And the price was the destruction of anything resembling real community. There’s a veneer of “culture,” but because of the obsessive desire to pretend everything is normal there is only a simulacrum of sympathy or social bonding. Living in these conditions it’s made clear that you couldn’t maintain any empathic bonds with your fellow citizens. Underneath the politesse there grows a kind of hateful disdain for all of your “friends,” who, if you’re lucky, will get the noose instead of you. After all, every disappearance is a confirmation of your own survival. Anyway they deserve it since they weren’t careful, and no one wants to be made to feel bad by things like mourning–or revolution.
In retrospect I assume that Adams intended this as a conservative satire of liberal statism. But a few decades after its production it reads like a fable of right-wing libertarianism, in which nature itself is a great market which ensures that everyone gets their due. The comments on Katrina I’ve been surfing confirm in a dull, plodding way my sense that America has passed a tipping point from which there will be no return. For every anguished comment there is a just-world retort rehearsing its authoritarian gestures with a kind of smug pleasure. The few places I’ve had time to surf, the two types of comment seem to be running about even. Et alia points to one livejournal whose quotient of “they deserve it if they didn’t evacuate” remarks is fairly hefty and also sports a good number of cunning, thinly sublimated versions of the same argument (“you don’t know anything about disasters, the relief efforts are doing their noble best”).
I’m left without a punchline. Like Cowslip’s fellow rabbits, I mainly just want to change the subject.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 13 2005 8:30 utc | 27

There have always been syncophants and collaborators in the working class, just the left in the past knew how to deal with them.
Don’t expect anything better from the plutocrats. All they understand is fear and the workers haven’t given them much to be feared of.

Posted by: Realism | Sep 13 2005 8:46 utc | 28

Re the just world theory:
Thanks for that most relevant link. This line at the end:

Neither science nor psychology has satisfactorily answered the question of why the need to view the world as just exerts such a powerful influence on human behavior and the human psyche.

reminds me of Mark Turner’s book Reading Minds in which he uses cognitive theories of mind to argue that our embodied sense of bilateral oppositional symmetry allows us to metaphorically project this knowledge onto “a great variety of conceptual situations involving proposals or assertions … moments that require a decision.” – p. 80, hardcover ed., ch. 4: “The Body of Our Thought (and the Thought of Our Body)”.
Advances in cognitive linguistics and psychology may help provide answers to the question put in the block quote above – but probably not in my lifetime nor to the degree that the rift in my family along the just world theory – i.e. “god works in mysterious ways (and those people deserved it)” – can be resolved.

Posted by: Hamburger | Sep 13 2005 9:34 utc | 29

The more I read, the more I think that nothing short of a “storm of the Bastille”, or better the WH house will bring a change. But for that to happen I guess more people have to become deprivated and desperate, to finally rise. This government will not go by itself.

Posted by: Fran | Sep 13 2005 9:52 utc | 30

Some Can Multitask, Some Can’t
confirmation of Bernhard’s (Hunting Season) comments about “Mr. Bramble” being mentally and emotionally stretched, are reflected in their opposite polarity: his own ideal super-ego superspin. In a YAHOO NEWS report By NEDRA PICKLER, (Associated Press Writer Tue Sep 13, 2:38 AM ET)
Mr. Bramble was quoted as saying, “I can do more than one thing at one time.”
Ever since cognitive multitasking was misinterpreted by the folk-psychological media into a god-given right that should make one feel guilty not to have, there is a persistent myth that humans, with limited cognitive-affective resources can in fact meaningfully multitask, and chew gum at the same time.
I have seen videos of Mr. Bramble multitasking: he winks conspirationally, shakes hands and desinfects, chews gum, mutters a formulaic sentence or two, and walks at the same time. Rather, he is guided by the many secret service hands into a quiet room for decompressing.
And yet, contrary to evidence from Cognitive Science, Mr. Bramble predicts:
“By the time I’m finished president, I hope you’ll realize that the government can
do more than one thing at one time and individuals in the government can,” And further, “If I’m focusing on the hurricane, I’ve got the capacity to focus on foreign policy and vice versa.”
If humans could meaningfully multitask, we would not need so many brain centers to, idependently and automatically, process information. But our brains require surplus of energy to do this when confronted with novel situations, when the “bramble” is under water. Only highly efficient brains, expert brains, seem not to require as much energy to run. Take for example, the brain of a Zen Master. If the government could multitask, there would be need for only one person, Mr. Bramble, doing all the work, rather than having a sinister behemoth with tentacles everywhere. The only person who came close to meaningfully multitasking, was President Bill Clinton.

Posted by: Ricardo G. Valencia-Sevilla | Sep 13 2005 10:28 utc | 31

I still think people are not grasping the full magnitude of this event. I don’t think it can be spun away. Major historic events are like that. These people have been surpassed for now.
I can’t imagine that a disaster this large could fail to bring a change. Exactly what kind remains to be seen.
It’s not important about what happens to the regime right now. What’s important is looking at this completely and start thinking in earnest about what we can do to repair our underlying, real problems. Start from the bottom, that gaping black hole, and work up. There exit will meet our readiness to move past them. People are really nervous and awake.

Posted by: jm | Sep 13 2005 12:54 utc | 32

http://americahurrah.com/SanFrancisco/MunicipalReports/1906/Index.htm
The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906
3000 killed and 250,000 homeless of a population of 400,000.
An almost exact analogy to New Orleans, except the popular Teddy
Roosevelt was President, a man who came to office on guns and butter.
Study for yourself the political-economic fallout.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906
Coincidentally in that year, the largest earthquake on record
happened in Ecuador, and a typhoon killed 10,000 in Hong Kong.
The first airplane was flown that year, the first major motion
picture was shown, and Mt Vesuvius erupted, destroying Naples.
The Panama Canal, the greatest civil engineering feat of that
era, was just getting underway, with the first Jim Crow dual-
wage system, one that will be repeated soon in New Orleans.
http://www.inmotionaame.org/education/lesson.cfm
Another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Posted by: tante aime | Sep 13 2005 15:17 utc | 33

Xymphora amplifies Lupin’s comments above, in his posting about “Disaster Capitalism”, and “Aparteid America.”
A cusory search of the liberal web reveals the majority sentiment spawned by Katrina as “incompetance.” While that sentiment may be beneficial to one’s spleen, it has neve troubled the ruling elite. A “coherent political belief system” cannot be achieved without a clear understanding of events and their significance. Government–in order to maintain and expand power for the enfranchised–has always attempted to thwart any understanding of its true objectives. It is important to communicate what is really happening to others. The “incompetence” meme may be perpetuating itself because the alternative is simply too scary–similar to Nazi Germany.
Connect the dots for people–Peak Oil, a ruinous energy grab, rising energy prices, falling profits, rampant privatisation, government manipulation of the stock market, the housing bubble, the new bankrupcy laws, random blackouts in third world countries, selective victimization of the underclass: The Police State must be implemented before the housing bubble bursts. They are working feverishly to accomplish this.
Re: Just World Hypothesis–
It is very scary for people to believe that there is no ultimate justice, as that implies no ultimate purpose to life. All political and religious cant is constructed to offer people a “higher purpose” to buy into. Very few are brave enough to accept what is, endure suffering, and live without ulterior purpose.
One way to approach this rigidity within people’s conceptions of the world is to jar it by pointing out how interpretations of justice differ when viewed through the lens of different time frames.
It is clear to most that retribution is not immeadiate. When you steal a candy bar or a car, nothing happenens to you at that instant. So the problem becomes one of defining when an “appropriate” length of time has passed for the guilty to suffer consequences. This raises doubt in people–how long is enough time, and how long is too much time? And who determines this?
At that point they can be asked whether or not there is a sword poised above our heads. Who determines this, and when will it fall?

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 13 2005 15:22 utc | 34

A N N I V E R S A R Y
All very end Aug. or first two weeks of Sept. 2005.
The cover story of The Boulder Weekly Com:
9/11: Cold Case
A former Bush-appointed official is calling for a new, independent, scientific investigation into 9/11
No new facts in it, just lays out all the improbabilities / impossibilities. The official is Morgan Reynolds. He’s been reading David. R. Griffin and Webster Tarpley…
Link
Times-Herald Com. published:
Sept. 11 riddles remain
Link
This article refers to Able Danger and re-hashes the Israeli Art Student ‘spies’ questions.
A long, but not too long, readable, blog entry on Live journal by ‘Winter Patriot’ gives an extensive and acceptable summary with many links:
9/11: Physical Evidence Contradicts Official Story
Link
Thierry Meyssan has appeared on Iranian TV saying it was an inside job.
Memri
Dutch TV claimed it was an inside job, citing amongst others Michael Meacher.
Link
Wanttoknow posted this:
Top Politicians, Economists, Other Leaders State 9/11 Possibly an Inside Job
Link
———-
Pretty slim really – that was the best. (?) What of Katrina in four years time?
———-
Disaster Capitalism. (Expression from Naomi Klein.) Bush blew it. NORAAD blew it, The CIA-duh and FBI blew it, the FAA blew it, fighter pilots blew it, investigators blew it, the 9/11 Commission…. FEMA blew it, the NO Po-lice blew it, the Engineer Corps blew it, the NO local authorities blew it…
Right!
Or should it be blewed? Yikes…

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 17:18 utc | 35

Federal government institutions have been prostituted to private wealth and corporate interests. The only government interest is keeping the shipping lines and the Port of New Orleans open. The city and its residents were and are invisible to the decision makers.
Disney will take over the French Quarter, Trump will rebuild the casinos and Halliburton will construct worker hostels for the ports and refineries. The rest of New Orleans will become a superfund site that will be quarantined, capped and eventually a wildlife theme park.

Posted by: Jim S | Sep 13 2005 17:19 utc | 36

Posted by: Malooga | Sep 13, 2005 11:22:55 AM | #

At that point they can be asked whether or not there is a sword poised above our heads. Who determines this, and when will it fall?

The Kingdom of God is within you. If you are made in the “Image of God” then everything you curse is taken personally by that entity. How can it ever be expected to help you “In times of trouble”. The sword may fall at random but there will be no cognitive protection.
“Thou shalt not take the ‘Lords’ name in vain.”

Posted by: pb | Sep 13 2005 17:26 utc | 37

Uncle $cam,
Thanks for the Watership Down connection. I know people for whom this connection will change their thinking. Keep it coming!

Posted by: citizen | Sep 13 2005 17:32 utc | 38

hat tip to Malooga –
Here’s a clip from Glen Ford (blackcommentator) on why the Federal Government actually owes the poor of New Orleans whatever it costs to restore them to their hometown.
The people of New Orleans have the right to be made whole, again. They are citizens, wounded by their own government. The rights of citizens cannot be privatized, or churched-out, or Salvation-Armyed out. All help is appreciated, but we must also focus on rights – the right to not be permanently displaced by depraved government policies or the corporate greed that will certainly try to swallow New Orleans whole – just as whole as did the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.
Displacement based on race is a form of genocide, as recognized under the Geneva Conventions. Destruction of a people’s culture, by official action or depraved inaction, is an offense against humanity, under international law. New Orleans – the whole city, and its people – is an indispensable component of African American culture and history. It is clear that the displaced people of New Orleans are being outsourced – to everywhere, and nowhere. They are not nowhere people. They are citizens of the United States, which is obligated to right the wrongs of the Bush regime, and it’s unnatural disaster. Charity is fine. Rights are better. The people of New Orleans have the Right to Return – on Uncle Sam’s tab.

Posted by: citizen | Sep 13 2005 18:00 utc | 39

It matters if one sees what happened in NO as a duplicitous stand-off engineered by BushCo and/or an ‘embedded’ rogue or even now essential branch of Gov. (FEMA) – by extension, symptoms of the march towards a full-blown corporate fascist state-, or as wilfull destruction by sadistic petty criminal planning to acquire booty, valuable property- , or as a series of effups that are explicable, excusable, a tragedy badly handled for which heads should roll — until the next one comes along.
Yes it matters. Evidently.
What matters more is that nobody, holding any one of these povs post hoc, prevented or stopped it from happening.
So what next?

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 18:05 utc | 40

What a great thread this is!
Clueless Joe, don’t sign up for Mandarin yet. Our contacts are telling us by 2Q06 to 4Q06 the Chinese economy will implode.
They are already building up massive domestic police forces to
handle the likely food, housing and currency riots as banks fail.
Our contacts in Taiwan expect a desperate cross-straits attack,
and literally billions are being spent in survival preparations.
Maybe you should learn to speak HAL-KBR! The monies not half-
bad, even if it’s not prevailing wages, at least it’s in gold.

Posted by: tante aime | Sep 13 2005 18:26 utc | 41

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FRA501A.html
Learn to speak HAL-KBR, or join the Salvation Army.
You Yanks have a total debt now greater than the
value of all US goods, services and real estate.
Suggest you apply for Chapter 7, 11 and 13, mate!
When China goes down, we’ll all be speaking Saudi.

Posted by: Lash Marks | Sep 13 2005 18:39 utc | 42

Responding to jm, Noisette & other remote barflies, here’s a quick Anatomy of the Hole that’s opened up as seen from the Homefront.
New Orleans provided the Elite Media w/their Judy Garland Moment – Hurricane Toto pulled back the Curtain & The Great Wizard of DC stood Revealed at Last.
Reporters from the Elite media were there on the ground in New Orleans. “Pres.” was on vacation. Officials were screaming for help & there was none. Only the Reporters were there standing next to Americans drowing in the streets, doctors terrorized in hospitals trying to fend off armed junkies while the water rose w/no one came to MediVac their patients to safety. And on and on as far as the eye could see, not only in a Great American City, but in city after city, too many to count, in state after state.
Suddenly, reporters are asking themselves about the Wizard & the world in which they’ve slept so lucratively since he & his stole the White House the first time.
Secondly, His only claim to “fame” was that he was the Great Protector. Oopsy, the Wizard’s trousers have just fallen around his little ankles. If you looked the other way when so many people said he walked away when told that America would be attacked & you refused to listen to those who said that 911 involved complicity, you could pretend there was nothing he could do about 911. But that’s gone now too, as he did Nothing for a Week – after having cut the funds for several yrs. to protect it – while New Orleans warned it might drowned and then did so in front of the entire nation. The Pres. entertained himself w/his little boy games – playing the guitar & wowee zowee even getting saluted by real, not toy, soldiers – while countless tens of thousands died & we lost a city.
Thirdly, the response was so incompetent that:
a) People discovered that he had deliberately Destroyed FEMA, which only a mere 5 yrs. ago had been a first-rate professional operation, the only agency that everyone across the political spectrum agrees is essential to our welfare. Jesus, how many other government Departments & agencies have likewise been destroyed by cronyism, ideological zealotry & corruption. Is there anything left of America people across the world are asking – The Silent Majority possibly excepted. Oh, and by the way, America is again Totally Humiliated in front of the world.
b) Pres’ ultimate reassurance was No Worries, he’ll demand a $50B bailout bill so people won’t suffer. Oh, but no Accountability. And again bill forced through in such a hurry that it put Congress is over the barrel as far as voting – just like the go to war in Iraq bill – vote No & you look like you want the poor folks in NO to suffer; vote Yes & you’re merely lining the pockets of his rich buddies. People start to ask if this is just looting by his cronies & oh, was that what was Iraq about too. And where will the money come from, as he also demands abolition of Estate Taxes for Uber-rich, lest he personally not get every goddamn penny he can from Mommy & Daddy. (The WaPo even admits that he merely authorizes checks from the Treasury & figures he’ll worry about that detail later.)
c) WSJ prints article about NO white elite meeting to discuss rebuilding the City the way They want it., over scotch w/ice brought in by their helicopters. And people ask if these guys probably told the Pres. et al, to let it sink so they could drive out the po’ black folk & make a fortune.
While the Wizard stands Exposed as unable to even Comprehend the speeches he’s given to read, he has decided to use nuclear weapons in pre-emptive attacks against any country that may have “terrorists”.
Tick…
Tick****
Tick!!!!
Finally, the media that identify w/the ego of the elite – WaPo & Kos (see Armando’s statement about this right after the election) – are waking up…Is the Perfect Storm Gatherin on the Horizon …911, Bankruptcy, Wreckage of the institutions of governance, broken Army mired in Iraq…
It better move quickly, however, as these guys are Armed & Extremely Dangerous. Apparently all Army & Air Force leaves were cancelled this summer beginning about now. And Dan Ellsberg said recently “This feels like a pre-Reichstag fire moment to me”.

Posted by: jj | Sep 13 2005 19:07 utc | 43

the 9/11 dead are still dead (or mostly missing) and what about the 100 000 Iraqis, starved or bleeding on pavements or in front of their small fridges that no longer function?
9/11 that was the scandale du jour in 2001, bled into 2002, dead Iraqis had a small window of oppo when there was nothing in the news about abducted white girls or Plame Blame…
I understand that anything that get get Bush or the Reich Wingers impeached or thrown out is of vital interest
but its not enough guys not enough
and it won’t work
the US public has shown it will swallow anything
remember this: every secret service, every Gvmt. in the western world, and outside of it too, knows that 9/11 was not what it was touted to be. They all know. Pay lip service, for the media, and send coded messages. They are afraid of offending the hegemon, afraid of provoking a nuclear attack. Appeasement…heard that all befo’.
they know the American people will never rise up – it is figured in their calculations black on white. (Just a guess, I haven’t seen the papers..)

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 19:09 utc | 44

Not that I am sayin’ anybody else would do better

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 19:15 utc | 45

Noisette, just read the post you wrote while I was writing. Of course, every thinking person who has ever wielded power, and many who have simply read history, know 911 was an inside job, but this line stands out:
They are afraid of offending the hegemon, afraid of provoking a nuclear attack.
So, perhaps we need to look at this new doctrine of using Nukes in a new light. I thght. it was only a declaration of intent to attack Iran. Maybe, but could it also signal the death throws of The Hegemon – it knows it’s going down & it will throw everything at anyone that frightens it at any time? A statement of The Great Unravelling? While Calif. holds its Burning Man Festival, the Govt. is holding it’s Drowning Man Celebration, threatening to bring down everyone/anyone w/it?

Posted by: jj | Sep 13 2005 19:18 utc | 46

@ jj yes I agree good post but see above
clogging the thread – scusi

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 19:25 utc | 47

EJ Dionne concurs:
End of the Bush Era
The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them — and the country.
Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush’s government doesn’t work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The source of Bush’s political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush’s calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.
….
The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda — for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

“Competence and Innovation” – right, that’ll do it!!! Doesn’t seem to even know that both parties are precisely the problem…

Posted by: jj | Sep 13 2005 19:44 utc | 48

The US will use nukes, as it has not much else but military clout. It is almost forced to. End Times, all that.
It has been chipping away at the ‘non-proliferation of nuclear arms treaty’ for many years, without stress and slowly, because it knows it does not matter. In fact, it is trying lackadaisically to get other nations to agree that they might be nuked, and that might be allright. Once done, for example, in the UN, the US could posture, dominate, quote texts – about pre-emption and all the rest. It worked for Iraq, but without the nukes.
Those moves are in themselves part of the hegemonic threatening posture, they spell – We will do this because we now can.
Bolton I am sure is working on that.
Just two links from google–
March 2002, Common Dreams:
U.S. Works Up Plan for Using Nuclear Arms
Link
and:
The Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons: New Doctrine Falls Short of Bush Pledge
Arms Control Assoc. Sept. 2005.
Excerpt:
What’s New?
“The importance of the new doctrine is less about what it directs the military to do, and more about what it shows U.S. nuclear policy has become. It has changed considerably from the 1995 version. A new chapter has been added on theater nuclear operations, a discussion of the role of conventional and defensive forces, and an expanded discussion on nuclear operations.
The addition of a chapter on theater nuclear operations reflects the post-Cold War preoccupation of U.S. nuclear planners on finding ways of deterring regional aggressors (i.e., rogue states) armed with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. It also reflects a decade-old rivalry between the regional combatant commanders and U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) over who “owns” regional nuclear-strike planning.
Yet, the new doctrine’s approach grants regional nuclear-strike planning an increasingly expeditionary aura that threatens to make nuclear weapons just another tool in the toolbox. The result is nuclear pre-emption, which the new doctrine enshrines into official U.S. joint nuclear doctrine for the first time, where the objective no longer is deterrence through threatened retaliation but battlefield destruction of targets.”
Link

Posted by: Noisette | Sep 13 2005 20:55 utc | 49

jj,
All well put.
The signs of the end and are all over the map. The nukes are an attempt to shore up power with a defeated and destroyed military. I think the Soviet Union did the same thing right before it went down. Our military strength is gone and so is any hope of a neocon empire. They never had the control and organization to put their theories into action. It was all a big experiment.
These people are no different from any other corrupt politicians in a moment of perceived power. All of this is what we give them by obssessing and making them something they aren’t.
It does make a difference having Democrats back in which is inevitable. It won’t be the end of corporate rule, it will simply mean Democratic policies which are always more beneficial to the country as a whole. That’s what we need right now as we are in severe crisis. We can overcome the election rigging to some extent, enough to take the reins as the nation understands we are in need of leadership.
The Darwinian philosophical experiment just failed. The Republicans need to go back to the drawing board. You cannot privatize government. The evidence is all before us. Now is the time to act.

Posted by: jm | Sep 13 2005 23:49 utc | 50

Well since we seem to be in a grim mood on this thread, here is Emmanual Todd to cheer us up even more with his predictions of a USSR-style collapse of the US. Infant mortality stats are a pretty good demographic indicator…

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 14 2005 0:10 utc | 51

& to add more bad news that is becoming habitual – murdering american armies are massacring the people of haditha & tal jafar – this day with the assistance of their puppet troops – wat they call control is in normal & functioning language – murder
& there will be a tidal wave of murder to come before emmanual todd’s dream will come to fruition

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 14 2005 0:51 utc | 52

r’giap,
Thankfully, I feel that you won’t be one of the murdered ones.

Posted by: jm | Sep 14 2005 1:03 utc | 53

not a moment after i posted last comment – there is news of the habitual indiscriminate bombing of the town karabilia – where as usual the murder of innocents will never be mentioned for a moment anywhere else
this empire deserves all that will arrive – & it will

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 14 2005 1:05 utc | 54

now that the shock & awe of katrina & the rage has somewhat subsided, it is important that us citizen resistors of the u.s. not let the attrocities that our govt is committing on the people of iraq get buried. i hope that nugget hasn’t given up on us. we need to circulate the reports & analyses, string up the links that demand the attention of all.

Posted by: b real | Sep 14 2005 2:55 utc | 55