On Vacation - if you will

i'm leaving for nyc this afternoon, and am excited at the prospect of getting a fabulous apt. but i'll continue to make posts from the city - they can't keep this ol' bitch down.

bush's power grab

first 9/11 allowed this criminal to exact more power for himself, and now katrina is offering up (in his mind anyway) the same scenario:

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday urged Congress to examine whether the White House needs stronger powers to deal with catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina.

Bush’s backing for the congressional inquiry raised the possibility that lawmakers might expand presidential authority to:

• Order mandatory civilian evacuations

• Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations

• Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.

--source

he's already got those powers, and yet failed to use them to prevent lives:

from http://www.ohioema.org/robertt.htm:

Sec. 402. In any major disaster, the President may -

(1) direct any Federal agency, with or without reimbursement, to utilize its authorities and the resources granted to it under Federal law (including personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and managerial, technical, and advisory services) in support of State and local assistance efforts;
(2) coordinate all disaster relief assistance (including voluntary assistance) provided by Federal agencies, private organizations, and State and local governments;
(3) provide technical and advisory assistance to affected State and local governments for -
(A) the performance of essential community services;
(B) issuance of warnings of risks and hazards;
(C) public health and safety information, including dissemination of such information;
(D) provision of health and safety measures; and
(E) management, control, and reduction of immediate threats to public health and safety; and
(4) assist State and local governments in the distribution of medicine, food, and other consumable supplies, and emergency assistance.

BUSTED!

busted! was a series of articles i did in another forum where the bushites were caught with their pants down lying about something. here we go again:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

--nytimes

remember bush whining about how nobody ever thought of terrorists using airplanes, and 'certainly never' thought they would use them to crash into buildings? how many months did it take to prove him wrong? obviously, the times thought long enough that nobody would remember.

Letter Of The Day

News flash: That old adage about how crime doesn't pay? Guess what? That's no longer true. In America in 2005, crime does pay.

I learned recently that someone had used my card to buy an Ipod Mini. I called the store where the item was purchased and in five minutes had the name and address of the person who used my card (he had the item shipped to his home).

But too bad for me: The person who committed the fraud lives in Santa Ana, Calif., and I live in Ames. Can you tell where this is going? The Santa Ana police aren't interested because I don't live there, and the Ames police aren't interested because the crime was committed in Santa Ana. Nor does the FBI care.

Silly me! I thought using someone else's credit card was a crime.

So if you want free Ipods, flat-screen TVs, computers or whatever, find someone's credit card and have at it. No one will try to stop you. And when you've shopped till you've dropped, take your shoes off, relax and ponder the joys of life in 21st-century America — the land where crime pays.

-M. M. Ogle, Ames.

--source

Quote of the Day

"Women are trying to prevent unaffordable pregnancies and babies without health insurance and are morally judged. Men are worried about getting it up and are supported with public resources. Very telling of privileged and priorities."
--Patty Bixler, Norwalk (IA)

attribution

it's not a democrat-republicon thing

it's a humane thing. and this one deserves the medal of unbridaled stink.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.

Louisiana governor Katherine Blanco subsequently inked a contract with the firm after talks between FEMA and the firm broke down.

In other words, FEMA and then Blanco outsourced the body count from Hurricane Katrina -- which many believe the worst natural disaster in U.S. history -- to a firm whose parent company is known for its "experience" at hiding and dumping bodies.

The Menorah Gardens cemetery chain, owned by SCI, desecrated vaults, removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the gruesome remains in woods frequented by wild hogs, investigators discovered in 2001. In one case, a backhoe was used to crack open a vault, remove corpses and make room for more dead bodies.

SCI paid $100 million to settle a lawsuit filed by outraged family members of the deceased.

A secretary at the lawfirm that sued SCI over the Florida cemetery scandals gasped when informed that FEMA had outsourced handling of Katrina victims' bodies to an SCI subsidiary.

"Oh, good lord!" she said.

Peter Hartmann, general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain, was later found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning outside his parents' home in an apparent suicide.

--rawstory

rummy's idea of freedom of the press

this just makes me sick. and it's the army that's most dangerous on this issue. of course, like all dictatorships, they claim it's for the common good in what they're doing, but how can anybody know for sure without proof of pictures? that we should just take their word that this is what is happening? dictatorships ask the people to trust them. democracies require the people to trust them.

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.

"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

--sfgate

the definition of total incompetence

from today's papers:

Meanwhile, in some neighborhoods, the U.S. took "every military-age man into custody." An informant then walked around deciding who could go free by pointing his thumb up or down. Such informants have something less than a perfect record. "We almost never get anything good from them," said one GI. "I think they just pick people from another tribe or people who owe them money or something."

Letter Of The WeeQ

Compare and contrast the 2004 hurricane season in which four hurricanes battered Florida with Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2004, President Bush and FEMA responded promptly. President Bush was there handing out bottled water to the victims. FEMA was there handing out checks.

The president's direct involvement and FEMA's response in 2004 created the standard for the federal response.

As Hurricane Katrina roared into Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, President Bush stayed on vacation while Michael Brown, FEMA director, postured before the national media cameras telling the nation help was on the way.

But no help came. From Monday through Friday, we watched the tens of thousands of people crowded into the Superdome with no water and no food, breathing in the stench of overflowing toilets. We watched people go into insulin shock. We saw others collapse from the heat. We saw bodies of the dead, one a person slumped in a wheelchair holding a note. We watched the anger of survivors grow and anarchy reign in New Orleans.

So, what is the difference between 2004 and 2005?

In 2004, President Bush was running for re-election. In 2005, President Bush is a lame-duck president.

-Mary Orr, Davenport.

--attribution

Letter Of The Day

Just as George W. Bush has worn 9/11 like a crown, he should forever have to wear hurricane Katrina as a Scarlet Letter.

-Marcia Brunsvold, Boone.

--source

the epitome of crass

BAGHDAD - Scores of Mississippi National Guardsmen in Iraq who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina have been refused even 15-day leaves to aid their displaced families, told by commanders there are too few U.S. troops in Iraq to spare them, according to guardsmen.

--source

here, let me hit you before you hit me

even if i can't PROVE you're going to. this isn't how America should be.

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

--source

what went wrong?

slate's today's papers makes it their topic for the day, and in it, this lil' gem:

More absurd: FEMA held hundreds of firefighters in Atlanta for community relations and sexual harassment training before sending them to Louisiana.