I. Dicked Again
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September 6, 2005
WB: Dicked Again + Disaster Response
Comments
It’s too bad Bush doesn’t own a bank. I’d send him a memo saying in 3 days I was going to rob it. At that point I’m home free. CNN might show up as I was cracking the vault. Bush’s security chief would claim, upon being told of the theft-in-progress, that such reports were unverified and wildly overblown. Later, in explaining to the stockholders and FDIC how such a robbery could be pulled off in broad daylight, with advance notice and covered by CNN, Bush would promise to get back with everybody later after asking around what the fuck happened to his bank.
Posted by: steve duncan | Sep 6 2005 19:43 utc | 1
Thought for the Month
IN DEFENSE OF PAT ROBERTSON
1 Artemis 83 p.s.U.
Nothing is true. All is permitted.
Hasan i Sabbah
Just as a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, even a Christian Fundamentalist gets a savvy notion every now and then. I think rev. Robertson had a good idea when he suggested replacing war with assassination in one case, on economic grounds. He merely didn’t carry the concept far enough.
I suggest that we should abolish war utterly and replace it entirely with selective assassination. Think about the savings this would mean, in this age when even our “little” wars cost billions of dollars a year, and rememer the cogent observation of the late Senator Dirkson: “A billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’re talking about REAL Money.” We’ve already gotten our national debt so high that our posterity “unto the seventh generation” will never pay it off; do we really need to enslave the whole future to the international bankers?
On the moral side, killing a few dozen foreigners a year instead of a few hundred thousand should seem less messy, to say the least of it, especially when you consider the collatarel damage to our own side. How much blood and death do we need?
Reversing a sentimental error of the ‘60s, the new anti-war slogan should be MAKE ASSASSINATIONS, NOT WARS.
And, best of all, if this idea catches on internationally we can expect at least 50 contracts on George Bush the first week.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 6 2005 19:48 utc | 2
from the krt article linked to in billmon’s post:
The elder Bush said that he and his wife, Barbara, don’t enjoy hearing their son criticized.
“The president can take it. What do I think as a father? I don’t like it,” he said. “And if somebody wants to tell Barbara about things that are going wrong, (that) the president’s doing wrong, I suggest you wear your flak jacket.”
forget the bush daughters, send the old cow to iraq!
Posted by: b real | Sep 6 2005 19:58 utc | 3
Am I the only bothered by the fact of the massive military presence in the Gulf area?
Posted by: D | Sep 6 2005 19:58 utc | 4
Norquist’s Utopia: The NO Bathtub
Watching and reading the news carefully, I am sickened and fascinated by the sheer discipline of Bush’s response. Not once have I heard him suggest to any of the refugees he met that the government might help them. Instead, he directs people to the Salvation Army. Rather than order the help that we have stored up for ourselves in the Coast Guard and other emergency agencies, he promises a personal contribution to disaster relief.
History teaches that governments fall when their continuation promises famine, drought, death. But we do not need to study history. The Superdome is grounds enough to show that when government SOP is to leave the people in our own filth and provide not even food, not even water, then government depravity will produce depravity from we the people. Read the story of two EMS technicians in NO for an EMS conference, of how communities formed whenever food and water could be had, but how FEMA dicked them around, broke their fragile but essential communities, treated them like chaff among wheat.
Had you heard there was an EMS conference? Sounds like a fortuitous benefit to the survivors. But not if they are treated as trouble, as ‘gangs’ or ‘mobile marauders’ to be lied to, to be pushed away from the command centers, to be ordered out of sight. And where did this habit of sweeping the people under the rug come from?
“Free speech zones”
“Green Zones”
“Red States”
“bad guys”
Are we trash? Are we useless in an emergency? Only when constant effort is applied to atomize our own little local communities. Only when the resources we have stored up for emergencies are withheld by those to whom we entrusted them. Only when the ghosts of merciless empire prove to be our own ghosts, not “theirs”.
Grover Norquist famously gets off on fantasies of drowning the government in a bathtub. Surprise, surprise, Norquist didn’t mean the government, he meant the rule by the people and for the people. The neo-cons aren’t trying to make the government small enough to drown in the tub, but rather disciplined enough to drown us in the bathtub whenever the opportunity arises. Bush is Norquist’s disciple and you can see it in his rare discipline — stunning adherence to Norquist’s principles for a politician presented with such an opportunity to inspire gratitude! — to never offer to do his Executive job, to never, ever Execute the will of the people and spend our money to rescue our citizens and guests in need.
Why did he wait? Norquist knows.
Posted by: citizen | Sep 6 2005 20:18 utc | 5
It’s occured to me in the past couple of days that in Bush’s disordered mind, the current delusion is that he’s Lincoln, and he’s just freed the slaves. How else to explain all those black people roaming around everywhere?
Posted by: woid | Sep 6 2005 20:29 utc | 6
The Bush Administration is composed of true believers. Government is evil. Privatization is good. Appointment of incompetent administrators doesn’t matter. The States, local governments and Christian charities can handle all emergencies.
When Louisiana was overwhelmed by catastrophe; the Crawford Ranch, the White House, DOD and FEMA could not grasp that only the federal government has the resources to respond adequately and did nothing for days.
When Bill Clinton said the days of big government was over, the opposition party bought into this conservative ideology. The destruction of a USA city and death of thousands is the result.
Posted by: Jim S | Sep 6 2005 20:36 utc | 8
The Neo model for government is the
Bush SS crafting the next holocaust.
“We had to destroy ____ to save it.”
Now he wants $50B for NO, or as they
spin it, The Great New Orleans Flood.
Yet he’s telling everyone to contact
their local Salvation Army for aid?!
More shrink-wrapped $1M bales of $100’s
for the Bush oil-arms-drugs-and-WTO cartel?
Will DoD drop them at night into Crawford?
Really mass humorous on Billmon’s
New York Time piece, Dicked Again!
Cheney had to cancel his Calgary
tour, touting up the tar sands,
and more mad bank for HAL-KBR.
It must grate on them so *fierce* to
skip the prawns for the corn-meal crowd.
“You people”! “You people”! “You people”!
?What kind of a President literally cannot
bear the handshake of a voter, unless they
have been pre-screened by Young Republicans?
You can literally see the revulsion rippling
Bush’s face the few times he’s been in crowds
that weren’t limited to cheerleaders and pol’s.
That goes way, way beyond, Let them eat cake.
Me? … I see dead people. Glad to see so
much humor in the posts today, after 8/30.
Posted by: lash marks | Sep 6 2005 20:44 utc | 9
WTF????!!! Anybody wanna tell me what the fuck this is saying?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 6 2005 21:00 utc | 10
I’ve been saying for a week to expect that He killed tens of thousands of Americans. Now FEMA’s parent organization is saying to expect 40,000 killed/murdered. link
Expect them to do everything possible not to allow actual numbers out…then to say “we don’t want to guess” as excuse…last wk. I hrd on CNN that FEMA knew how many had been killed, but refused to divulge number.
Posted by: jj | Sep 6 2005 21:03 utc | 11
@uncle $cam, did you scroll down far enough to read billmon’s comment?……
“Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.”
When Beverly Hills, Greenwich, Conn. or the North Shore of Chicago get hit with a natural disaster as devastating as what destroyed New Orleans last week, we’ll have a chance to put your tribal theories to the test.
But until then, it probably would be better if white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers such as yourself kept your ignorant mouths shut, because you’re making your fellow tribal members look pretty stupid.
Posted by: Billmon on September 6, 2005 11:57 AM
Posted by: annie | Sep 6 2005 21:28 utc | 12
If you haven’t caught this from dKos Cheers & Jeers…
Chertoff: What’s the guy’s name in charge of media spin?
Brown: What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I’m not askin’ you who’s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: Who’s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don’t know.
Brown & Chertoff: MEDIA SPIN!!
And all that could not sink or swim was just left there to float….
Posted by: PeeDee | Sep 6 2005 21:38 utc | 13
“I hate those sons of bitches with all of my heart”
one line from $cam’s oh so loverly link. i think that about says it all.
Posted by: annie | Sep 6 2005 21:43 utc | 14
This is actually for “Tinfoil Time.”
I don’t like conspiracy theories but…. another little piece in what may be a puzzle…
Reading the Vancouver Urban Search and Rescue blog (here), I noted that one of the complaints they had, repeatedly, was how bad communications were. They expected phone lines and cell towers to be down, of course, but
Communications continue to be near non-existent with the satellite phones working very sporadically. (September 3rd entry, St John Parish)
My emphasis — now, why the HELL would the satellite phones fail? Remember, this is a professional team with the best equipment money can buy. And they can’t get their satellite phones to work??
They are also being pulled out of the area very rapidly now that American teams have arrived. They could stay for another five days according to their readiness schedules, but they’re already back in Vancouver. Looks as if someone wanted them out of there.
Posted by: sagesource | Sep 6 2005 21:50 utc | 15
by nature i don’t consider myseld to be a pessimist. but i know how to call a spade a spade. the failure was too huge to be just a matter of unorganization and ineptness. i don’t think it takes a tin hat to assume, w/this porportion of mayhem, that something very strange was going on, on purpose. i read something the other day about psy ops . i believe this was contrived. the more one reads, the louder the vitrol from the other side, the more likely it sounds. IMHO
Posted by: annie | Sep 6 2005 21:58 utc | 16
Over many years, I have become convinced that beneath our veneer of civilization is the animal that wants to survive, and that when law and order is suspended in like New Orleans Superdome for enough time, even pseudo-saints like Uncle $cams phantom narrator will eat human flesh, possible his own, to survive. The ninny writer of that self-righteous tribal essay is so sure of himself that he simply has to fail. It reminds me of Pericle’s Funeral Oration in Thucydides. Pericles praises Athens, calls it a school room for the rest of Greece to study, crows about their civility, creativity, freedom, and democracy, and uses the Spartans as as foil. But turn a few pages, and we will see Athens in the midts of plague, a dead Pericles, and a break down of order and morality. Hubris kills. And Bush and the Neocons have the disease.
Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 6 2005 22:04 utc | 17
And I am waiting for Faux News to slip and call those who remained behind in New Orleans “Insurgents.” It has to happen.
Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 6 2005 22:06 utc | 18
odd that right after my last post re sagesources comment i check billmon and hmm, a tinhat post. i do have my own theory(or 2) but i’ll wait for the thread here.
Posted by: annie | Sep 6 2005 22:13 utc | 19
Over many years, I have become convinced that beneath our veneer of civilization
Brit. observer reports that a group of young women on a rooftop waved to boat of cops to rescue them. Cops demanded they show them their breasts. When they refused, the cops sped away. link
Meanwhile pigs in Superdome were raping women & slitting their throats..
Posted by: jj | Sep 6 2005 22:16 utc | 21
WTF????!!! Anybody wanna tell me what the fuck this is saying?
A free translation: “White people are glorious. Brown people are scum. And I am not a racist.”
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 6 2005 22:34 utc | 22
How we will be able to get news out of the camps that are being set up? Can we even know where they are, can people leave, telephone, etc? Can reporters get in?
I haven’t seen any reporting, has anyone?
Any ideas?
Posted by: Dick Durata | Sep 6 2005 22:55 utc | 23
@Unca $cam
I read the essay you linked to and don’t understand your confusion. Human nature, being what it is, is prone to delusions and self-righteousness. The Federal Transportation and Safety Administation once commissioned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow to perform a study of how to improve airline safety by examining the behaviour of passengers during airplane crashes. What he found and reported was that a grown man in a burning room consistently demonstrates no compunction about stepping on the face of an infant that blocks his access to an exit. The FTSA refused to publish the report or to believe that human beings would act that way. Airline travellers must have some wealth, they reasoned. In order to accumulate wealth, they must also have some nobility and self-control. Therefore, Snow’s data must have been skewed.
The essay and responses you linked to come from people who are not currently suffering from deprivation in any physical sense. They are people whose self-worth and lives are based upon abstractions such as the accumulation of capital or “family values” and are, therefore, meaningless if stripped of an imagined nobility. Arguments will not tear down that construct and they will fight tooth and nail (on paper) to rationalise how they are above such baseness as survival. Console yourself with the fact that reality has more powerful tools than rhetoric at its disposal to tear down delusions and for all of their self-congratulations, those people are one crisis away from becoming those unfortunates that they look down upon.
Posted by: Monolycus | Sep 6 2005 23:06 utc | 24
well said Monolycus. but there are other dimensions. not everyone reverted to Hobbesian behaviours when the ordure hit the air mover. some people demonstrated solidarity and community. upbringing? neighbourhood or familial cohesion? faith? brain chemistry? your guess as good as mine.
I think you illumine something essential about the mindset of privilege, though. recent research suggests that chimps have a developed sense of fairness and react with anger to simple injustices. in a cooperative kin-group critter (all us primates), some sense of parity, equity, reciprocity is necessary for the cohesion of the basic survival unit (the kin group). so somewhere, I hazard, in our primate brain layer, is the notion of fairness.
when we are the beneficiaries of gross unfairness, we have to rationalise it somehow and ‘make it fair’. hence our need to believe that those who suffer structural disadvantages (like gender, race, class disadvantage which we may ourselves avoid by sheer dumb luck, having the right grandparents, etc), we really need to believe that we deserve those advantages, i.e. it is ‘fair’ for us to have them and others to be deprived.
Airline travellers must have some wealth, they reasoned. In order to accumulate wealth, they must also have some nobility and self-control. this is a classic “make it fair” argument: that wealth is always deserved because it is the product of applied personal virtues — never of dumb luck or crime or shady dealings. the antidote to this is the observation that “behind every great fortune hides a great crime” (or wtte).
similarly the privileged race in any racial neofeudalist system, be it SA or USA, needs an ideology that makes it ‘fair’ for the dominant race to get all the goodies and the subjugated race to suffer. this ideology might be that the subjugated race is biologically inferior and lacks virtue or intelligence, or that it has fallen into barbarism from a loftier past, or that it is closer to the animal (or the ape) and not quite human. or perhaps it is paying for its past sins (anti-Semites argued that the misfortunes of the Jews were due to their ancient crime of “killing Christ”, and some Hindu caste apologists believe that those born into low caste are paying in this lifetime for sins committed in former more privileged lives) — but an ideology must be found to satisfy the intolerable itch of injustice staring us in the face. the contortions we’ll go through to try to scratch that itch are remarkable. perhaps they are encouraging in a weird way, as they suggest how powerfully ‘fairness’ is wired into us and how hard we have to work not to be distressed by injustice.
Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 6 2005 23:43 utc | 25
Arguments will not tear down that construct and they will fight tooth and nail (on paper) to rationalise how they are above such baseness as survival.
Not only on paper. See Confederate States of America, 1861-65; Germany, 1933; Chile, 1973; El Salvador, 1979-87, etc. etc.
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 7 2005 0:27 utc | 26
$1.5 Billion Giveaway Secretly Slipped into Energy Bill, Waxman Says
Thank-you Monolycus, I had no confusion, I just wanted to hear erudite comments such as yours and others etc..
Kafka Goes Shopping – commentary in prose
(english)
We don’t need certain civil liberties to safely fly away from it all, to shop in peace for an American way of life, to watch Congress sing America the Beautiful on TV
There’s a red, white and blue light special in isle eleven, shoppers. Old glory on a white plastic stick in our auto accessory department. While you’re there checkout the everyday low prices on name brand motor oil. Why not stock up for the holidays!
Yes, these are New World orders, but it’s really an old world after all. We may no longer burn witches at the stake in the name of justice, but we do burn states that harbor evildoers. We do this because we are good and they are evil. We do this because we are one nation under God. United we stand by what looks like vengeance, with liberty and justice for all who agree. We pledge allegiance to the flag in homeroom, homeys in homeland, brand names on our backs. It’s the law, more or less.
We don’t need to see the evidence others have been shown. We don’t need certain civil liberties to safely fly away from it all, to shop in peace for an American way of life, to watch Congress sing America the Beautiful on TV. In times of “war” we may sacrifice rights, but we are free to spend, to invest in our nation’s futures. The business of the nation is business or legislation wrapped in the flag to keep the contents safe from traitors and enemies within our borders, un-American Americans, unpatriotic slow drivers, you people who think you’re free not to stand and face the music, face the front of the class, to repeat after me, to pledge until death do us part, to us or them, it’s you or me, now or never. No middle ground. With us or against us. So help me God.
You are being summoned to the castle now, to the towers. There is a sale going on. The village belongs to the castle, but it takes a castle to raise a village, and, to manufacture justice, to market justice and summon you to its closed gate. Two products: vengeance and justice. Look at this brand new justice. Does it resemble vengeance? Which is the better product? Which is more affordable? What will this product do for you? What will it do TO you? It’s your choice, shoppers. You decide.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 0:28 utc | 27
PG-13 for Adult Language and Violence
I called my father this weekend, feeling a little guilty
since he’s a shut-in, and we haven’t been in touch
since we pulled our roots and moved to Huntsville.
How are you doing, Dad? What do you think about
New Orleans? I asked, giving him two avenues.
I’m fine, he started in, They still won’t let me have
my whiskey after dinner.
I asked him about his health, and then probed,
Sure was a disaster in New Orleans, huh?
I was there once, he replied. That was it.
Even though I know he was glued to the tube
the whole week, and probably saw more horror
that I stomached occasionally channel surfing,
he just wouldn’t go there.
He calls them Coloreds, from the old days.
We went round and round some pleasantries,
and then drifted off how I would tell them to let
him have his whiskey. He wouldn’t go there.
So I was thrilled when a girl friend of mine called
from back home, to see how I was doing.
How are you?! I smiled, How’s the Bay Area!?
She lit right into me. You know, your e-mails
this weekend are like you taking a dump in my
swimming pool, then leaving me to clean it up.
So what do you think about Barbara?, I chanced.
Why don’t you spend more time trying to find a
job out there, and quit gossiping about other
people’s lives? she started her own diatribe.
We went round and round some pleasantries,
but she wouldn’t go there. She has no friends
making less than $250,000 a year. Except me.
I think I’m her charity case, her pro bono.
Then, making it sound more like afterthought,
she asked, Would you do something for me?
Figuring I was going to get her Christian
charity message, I nodded, Sure, OK.
My daughter is trying to become a caterer,
you know, like Martha Steward (sic).
That’s nice, I stayed neutral.
Yeah, she’s finally leaving the nest at 38!
Kids these days, I waffled.
Would you be a dear? You’re a computer
genius. Would you write down everything
she needs to build an e-commerce site?
I kind of stuttered, W-well–umm.
I have to go to a brunch in a half hour,
she added with a ‘ta’. Could you send it
right over? You have my e-mail.
Could you sent it right over!
Motto of the Republican National Party.
I polled my friends from back out west.
None of them had any interest in New
Orleans. They don’t pay any taxes, one
offered, Why should they expect a Fed
rescue service? Why didn’t they leave!?
I started to say about what it’s like when
you can’t walk because of chest pains
from doing asbestos and insulation work,
or you can’t get up anymore because your
liver is swollen from industrial painting
for a company that didn’t provide masks,
or the skin on your arms is burned off
and bleached white clear up to the elbows
in an industrial accident you received only
reimbursement for emergency medical.
I tried to explain what it means to leave
the only home you have, the only things
you have, your last place above nothing,
with no cash in your pockets, and no
shoes on your feet, walking into White.
But how can you? These Republicans,
and that’s who they all become, even if
they started out Democrats, are so rich,
they’d just drive off with their SUV’s and
their wallets full of plastic, and *buy*
a new house, while their old one was
being torn down and refurbished.
A second home is a good investment,
and that’s precisely why these people in
New Orleans couldn’t afford a home.
I know before in their lives, they’ve been
there. I know many had lived at home
with their parents during their salad days,
working as waitresses and bartenders,
candy stripers and stewardesses.
Somewhere in that darkness, God must
have seen he’d given them too heavy a
burden for white people to bear, and lifted
their load with a fast influx of m-o-n-e-y.
I know these people! I know how they
made their money, and for most of them,
it wasn’t by the sweat of their brow, it was
climbing over bodies, or crooked deals,
or legal manuevers, patent theft, fake
insurance claims, lucky stock breaks,
or just that their rich parents finally died.
And then they simply forgot! Those are
the times they never talk about. Those
are the people they’ve forgotten. It’s all
fast forward, eat my dust, learn or die,
and … could you send it right over?
The blacks, hispanics, jews, gypsies,
hippies, homeless, asians, single
mothers, old people, cripples, insane,
AIDs, their exclusion list goes on and on.
You are either on their invitation list, or
you are just forgotten! Either alpaca club
shirt, linen pants and handmade shoes,
or, What are you doing in our compound?!
How do people *get* like that?!
So I sent over a laundry list for her daughter,
who’s a nice enough, but clueless, victim of
that exclusive wealth, exactly as the victims
of New Orleans, but in a comfortable way.
I gave her the name of this black website
designer that I know. Was I being bad? %)
http://www.globalpartnerships.com
I think we should just face it. America is lost.
You are either with them (climbing over bodies),
or they are against you, and will press down on
US like a great weight of stones, extracting
what little oil is left in our shattered bones.
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 7 2005 1:36 utc | 29
FEMA camps, here’s the first thing I found, with photos:
OK Camp
Posted by: Dick Durata | Sep 7 2005 1:36 utc | 30
Mon cher tante aime, that is a beautiful and highly accurate piece of work.
For the climber or the one who is climbed upon, America is lost, yet there is another way.
But that America is ruled by a different god than the god who eased the white man’s burden.
A few points not already made about ejectreject….
1) how does a fabulously overpaid screenwriter get to call himself a sheepdog?
2) This site is too slick. I think it is funded to convert people.
3) His logic sucks. He continually conflates, substitutes parts for whole, etc.
4)This guy reminds me of Dickens–he must be paid by the word!
ruppert:
Greeks Bearing Gifts
What we now see emerging clearly is that the Democrats will make it a major plank in their platform that FEMA’s budget will be enormously expanded, along with its authority to act independently in a “crisis.” The poor, dispossessed and fearful will likely cheer for and demand these steps without having the slightest clue what they are asking for. Already I have heard Jesse Jackson pointing at FEMA and calling for hearings. The Democrats have found their sheet music.
Intelligent critics from both left and right have for years painstakingly documented FEMA’s paramount leadership role in Continuity of Government (COG) operations and planning. Better described, COG is what will happen if Congress is nuked, if a major catastrophe makes “normal” government operations impossible, or if there is major civil unrest (or total economic collapse). Much of FEMA’s infrastructure is really dedicated to this task and not to disaster relief. The COG function and authority has been greatly expanded since 9/11. At FTW we have written about FEMA many times and discussed it at length in my book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.
There is no shortage of verifiable government records confirming all this including about two score Executive Orders, The Patriot Act, The Homeland Security Bill, and a couple of pieces of legislation having to do with biological warfare enacted in the post-9/11 climate. COG work was initially begun way back in the late 1970s, and involved early input from the likes of Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North. That’s where FEMA actually came from.
If this thinking is not curtailed, then as the economic collapse of the United States becomes ever harder to conceal, FEMA will have been given a green light to impose the most draconian and heartless of measures in our country. FEMA will have the ability to divide the US up into ten autonomous regions, independently governed. Denver will be key to that decentralization and I note with irony that the CIA recently announced it was moving its National Resources (formerly Domestic Operations) Division to Denver (Washington Post, May 5, 2005) . FEMA will have the authority to confiscate any private property, food, medicine, personal vehicles, water supplies and even to impress citizens into forced labor and relocation as needed. FEMA will be able to override all local governments in a declared national emergency, quarantine neighborhoods and compel people to receive untested (for efficacy) vaccinations of drugs which may be dangerous (remember the smallpox vaccines?) and which will only enrich the pharmaceutical companies. FEMA will have the authority to confiscate firearms and gold held by private individuals. The government records proving what I say here are available in abundance and have been widely circulated over the internet for years. The little that remains of our Bill of Rights will simply cease to exist with a Code Red terror alert or another Katrina. And global warming makes another Katrina somewhere inevitable.
…
In short, what is being set up here is a massive, misguided and stupid effort to take convenient retribution for Katrina in a way that only ensures the more rapid demise of this once great nation. Do not put the blame on FEMA or believe that giving FEMA more money and power will solve anything. Too many of the bad decisions which cost lives in New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama were made at the White House
…
Simply throwing money and power at FEMA, without at the same addressing the corruption, depravity and outright evil that has become official Washington is probably more dangerous than Katrina was and I sure hope we don’t have to find that out.
Posted by: b real | Sep 7 2005 2:39 utc | 34
With regards to my post above: $1.5 Billion Giveaway Secretly Slipped into Energy Bill, Waxman Says
Instead of letting these people continue to escalate their political extortion can’t we bargain with them and buy our country back? They own the national treasury and are determined to loot it, aren’t we at least able to work a deal where we are allowed to continue to live after they take all of the revenue? Just wishful thinking on my part.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 2:48 utc | 35
WRT those FEMA camps.
I am sure that anyone with a deed to a lot in New Orleans will be able to make arrangements for a trip to the bus station and money for a ticket out.
They won’t be carrying their deeds with them, but those records will have been digitized and can be accessed remotely. As I said if they can’t be found online some data mining operation will have them available to any enterpriser who will pay a fee.
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 7 2005 3:22 utc | 36
Government Intervention in Stock Market is Detailed by New Report, GATA Says
“Given the available information, we do not believe there can be any doubt that the U.S. government has intervened to support the stock market. Too much credible information exists to deny this. Yet virtually no one ever mentions government intervention publicly, preferring instead to pretend as if such activities have never taken place and never would.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 3:30 utc | 37
If this thinking is not curtailed . . . FEMA will have been given a green light to impose the most draconian and heartless of measures in our country.
If FEMA is put in charge, this is going to be the most fucked up, anarchic police state in history.
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 7 2005 3:54 utc | 38
No, no, that’s Nazi police state:
How Bush’s grandfather helped Hitler’s rise to power Did we really win WWII? Bush Family Funds the Third Reich
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”
Herbert Spencer
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 4:02 utc | 39
If FEMA is put in charge, this is going to be the most fucked up, anarchic police state in history.
Ohhhhh, how terribly distressing that would be. Pleeease, Daddy, can’t we have a well oiled machine for a police state. That would be so much better.
Posted by: jj | Sep 7 2005 4:25 utc | 41
Ohhhhh, how terribly distressing that would be. Pleeease, Daddy, can’t we have a well oiled machine for a police state. That would be so much better.
You would prefer a dysfunctional police state in which nothing works, there’s no fuel, virtually no public services, and millions of people starve while what food there is rots in the fields?
You should move to North Korea.
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 7 2005 4:43 utc | 42
Anybody wanna bet race riots are coming soon?
After Oprah’s show sets in it going to pop!
You start wearing the blue and brown
You’re working for the clampdown
So you got someone to boss around
It makes you feel big now
You drift until you brutalize
You made your first kill now
In these days of evil presidentes
Working for the clampdown
-The Clash
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 7 2005 5:00 utc | 43
Dick Durata :
That is a truly chilling report.
Posted by: John Francis Lee | Sep 7 2005 5:02 utc | 44
“Five Days in Hell Just
Earned You a Nickel at
Church Camp ‘Razorwire'”
“$150,000,000 A Day,
And All FEMA Gave Me
Was This Crappy T-Shirt!”
“DNC Voter Registration
Is All You Need to Ride
on the Bush Magic Bus”
“Going Thru Hell Just
Gets You a Cold Shower
at Bushenwald Forest”
“Chertoff … Chertoff?
Wasn’t He in Ludendorf’s
Bolshevik Red Army?”
You try to joke, but the bitter and awful truth is this. The primary features of Early Communism (State-Corporate Socialism), that were then refined and perfected by Nazi Socialism were:
* Uncontrolled inflationary printing press finance, ultimately leading to hyperinflation and nationwide economic collapse [big “Y” for BushCo, Fed, real estate, commodities and stock bubbles]
* Near universal nationalization of manufacturing; widespread nationalization of retailing [big “Y” for BushCo and Wall Street monopolization of business into Corporate-State]
* Stringent price controls upon and forced requisitioning of agricultural products; state monopoly on grain purchases [big “Y” for BushCo
and Big Oil, Big Agribusiness price manipulation]
* Forced labor for civilians as well as the military [Average American is now a wage slave, indentured servant, sharecropper, war conscript]
Many years ago a cartoonist, Jules Pfieffer, commented on the next great source of energy.
In one word: “slavery”.
You are either with them (plantation owners),
or you are against them, and with all of US.
Posted by: lash marks | Sep 7 2005 5:05 utc | 45
Someone here once quipped:
Would you like turnips with
your cabbage soup, comrade?
Posted by: Neol Langsi | Sep 7 2005 5:18 utc | 46
If they keep devaluating money
in Washington, and billowing up
the Fed deficit like a peasant’s
skirts in a monsoon, the price
of agriculture commodities will
no longer cover production costs.
With no cattle … no cattle feed,
with no gasoline … no ethanol.
With no lack of surpluses, then
peasants spill corn in the fields,
farmers dump milk on parlor floors.
Without work for food, food riots.
Or … not! We could be on the verge
of the greatest economic boomtime in
American history, but with profits
accessible to only the fewest elite
since Early American Robber Baron’s.
Which will only exacerbate the above!
No matter how Corporate-Socialism prays,
they’re in thrall to Economic Ecology.
In fewer words? What goes around had
better come around quick, eh, guv’nor?
Posted by: Jeb Baxter | Sep 7 2005 5:45 utc | 47
Anybody wanna bet race riots are coming soon?
After Oprah’s show sets in it going to pop!
Unkka- I wrote a post but didn’t post it. then I saw what you wrote, so here goes anyway…
(cue twilight zone music)
The week before Katrina hit, I was reading about the Hopi elders, as I do from time to time, ever since my weird buffalo dream.
And, though I’ve been reading about them for years, I saw something I’d never seen before, in which a Hopi mentioned that the Iroquois had other prophecies about another racial uprising in America to come, but he would let the Iroquois tell about them.
At the time I thought that all the terrorism fear factor had made Muslims the “new black” so to speak, and wondered, with all the attention paid to the “clash of civilizations” how such a moment could be an issue (esp. because I know the neocons don’t want it to be an issue that people notice.)
…and then I saw what happened after Katrina hit and I felt like I was watching the beginning of just such a moment.
Not saying this is rational or reasonable, but it was one of those moments when the hair stands up on the back of your neck.
So I’ve been looking around for information about the Iroquois, just out of curiosity.
All the first nations are telling people to move out of cities and move to high ground, and have been saying this for decades, because of their belief in a coming ecological or manmade disaster that will destroy American cities.
Who knows.
But who, I wonder, doesn’t feel like we are living through a turning point, one way or another, across the world…as though we’re going through a shift, and the decisions we make, still, can make things better or worse for the near future of this world.
…if I had known the results of the judicial coup d’etat in 2000, I think I would have done more than watch the catastrophe unfold…but even so I wonder if it would have mattered.
Posted by: fauxreal | Sep 7 2005 6:13 utc | 48
A while back, I posted something odd about posse comitatus and possible behind the scenes wrangling. I had also read one incomprehensible newspaper article which I did not post.
Today, xymphora links to an important post by Dispatch from the Trenches, which sorts things out.
Read it and weep.
War on the Poor in New Orleans: 2 by Mick Arran
Sept. 6. 2005 (no permalink.)
OK, let’s get this straight: Michael Brown is most likely an incompetent stooge but the fact of the matter is that when he refused to release supplies, National Guard troops, and construction equipment, and then ordered the Superdome locked and checkpoints set up along the roads leading out of New Orleans to turn back anyone trying to escape the destruction, he was following orders. None of it was accidental, none of it was a matter of poor decision-making or the wrong priorities. It was a deliberate attempt by the Bush Administration to blackmail the state of Louisiana into handing the city over to the Federal government.
The rest is very detailed:
Link
Posted by: Noisette | Sep 7 2005 6:59 utc | 49
fauxreal, the hopi’s prophecy says the whole southwest will go back to the indigenous people. i just came from an area in arizona where they are trying to put in yet another developement of 800 more homes. the san pedro river is underground now and it simply cannot support more developement. its all over the front pages but for some reason the developers just don’t get it. aside from the bird migrations that depend on the fauna from the river, and all the wildlife that depend on the oasis in the desert, the absurdity of building these huge ridiculous houses all surrounding the military base. and it just keeps growing.in pheonix when you drive down the street during the day in the city its abandoned.everyone is inside w/thier airconditioner on. or the malls.its crazy. what kind of a life is this.
Posted by: annie | Sep 7 2005 7:01 utc | 50
noisette i agree, up to a point. i do think it was deliberate. but for reasons not yet mentioned. i believe they obviously had an assumption at some point katrins would strike. maybe not during bushes term but eventually. it is naive to assume they didn’t have any plan for a natural disaster and NO has always been one of the most likely to occur.so , they had a plan. and that plan encompassed controling the greatest port in the country and the reconstruction$$$. they got the gov’s pleas and they sat on them to force her to BEG for them to come in.it’s no accident the first words we hear from hassert are , buldoze the city. too much syncronicity. the same way they pushed out all the foriegn policy pros they also stripped fema of all the pros. this wasn’t a bungle it was the plan. cheney’s plan. IMHO. by isolating the remaining people there, in those conditions, they were hoping for a riot. they still are. to justify their actions. its not over yet, the party has just begun…
Posted by: annie | Sep 7 2005 7:16 utc | 52
also, i was referring to the foriegn policy pro’s w/ regard to the iraq post invasion
Posted by: annie | Sep 7 2005 7:23 utc | 54
Annie, thanks for continuing to make some sense of this.
Posted by: jonku | Sep 7 2005 7:24 utc | 55
FEMA TAKES THE FALL AND THE TEXAS MAFIA GETS THE PORT.
Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 7 2005 8:18 utc | 58