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September 24, 2005
Cheney's Blogcast: A Bedside Radio Address
Download file (2mb mp3).
(Written and recorded by Marc Evan Jackson)
12:54 PM | Comments (14) | Posted By Vice President Dick Cheney
Shepard Smith Gets Blown Away
This is one of the funniest cable news videos I've ever seen. Shepard Smith getting blown away by Hurricane Rita.
12:41 AM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
September 23, 2005
Idiot Nation.
Why are Americans so stupid? The lack of a good education is doubtless at the root of this particular evil. For instance, a school that would expel a kid for having gay parents. That's not my kind of school. But it's here in my home state of California.
A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter. Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.
Yeah, that's right: "Christian School."
School policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship," The Los Angeles Times reported in Friday's edition.
Nowhere in the four Gospels does Jesus Christ say a thing about homosexuality. Paul says a few nasty things about "sodomites," but that's not Christ, that's Paul. There is an argument to be made that Christ was, himself, gay, but make it at your peril. It can incur death threats, as playwright Terrence McNally found out.
Regardless of what kind of sex Jesus liked, why do these homophobes call themselves "Christians" and use Christianity as an excuse for their homophobia, when there is clearly no textual basis for it?
By the way, the little girl's biological mom has been with her partner for 22 years, and they have 3 kids. This couple could probably teach something about happy marriage to Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Henry Hyde and Newt Gingrich, among others.
05:18 PM | Comments (64) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
The flyover presidency continues
Numbnuts, en route, to his home state:
"There will be no risk of me getting in the way. What I will do is observe."
04:03 PM | Comments (1) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Disaster without end
New Orleans today:
"Our worst fears came true," said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard."We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly," he said. "At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they've grown larger."
02:54 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Global climate change
The term "global warming," like many quickly adopted scientific terms (i.e. the theory of general relativity) is not entirely accurate. And it's the lack of accuracy that lends credence to the cudgels of the anti-science monkeys who seek to beat reason out of us. "How can their be global warming," they crow, "if we got record rainfalls and icy winters?!"
The answer is "global warming" really should be called "global climate change." Some areas are hotter and some are colder, but the net result is, things are getting increasingly inhospitable for humankind. And whatever you wish to call it, there's no question that we humans are holding the smoking gun.
A new study out from Georgia Tech showing a relationship between global climate change and hurricanes reinforces and expands upon one from MIT earlier this month.
"What we found was rather astonishing," says Peter Webster of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "In the 1970s, there was an average of about 10 Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide per year. Since 1990, the number has averaged 18 per year."Although Webster and his fellow researchers stop short of attributing the increase directly to global warming, they say the worldwide increase in intense storms — like Hurricane Katrina — closely matches the predictions of computer climate models for a warmer world.
"It's impossible to say that a particular hurricane like Katrina, or any other storm, is due to climate change. But storms like Katrina have increased tremendously in all ocean basins of the world, so the trend doesn't appear to be a result of natural variability," says Webster.
02:37 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
"The worst planning I've ever seen"
"This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Julie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. "They say we've learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn't prove it by me."
It took two days for them to figure out they should open up incoming traffic lanes on the freeways out of Houston. Does this sound familiar:
"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers,'' she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money.''
Read the rest.
02:10 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Fitting Frist's ankle-bracelet
A federal investigation into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's sale of HCA Inc. stock widened on Friday when the largest U.S. hospital chain said federal prosecutors had subpoenaed the company for related documents.
Oh, Dr. Bill. Did you think that being a shameless greedy lawbreaker would help you get elected to the highest office in the land? Sorry. If you'd dodged the draft, skipped out on your National Guard duty, got picked up for DWI, snorted lots of coke, and had a history of failed businesses -- then maybe he'd be in shape to become the POTUS. Just being a crook really only makes him fit to be VP.
Read the rest here.
01:54 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
September 22, 2005
What Republican is NOT a crook?
The massive degree of systematic theft at high corporate and Bush administration levels is truly impressive. It looks like Rep. Bob Ney from the remarkably disgraced state of Ohio (2004 election theft, Coingate, Abramoff/Savafian connections -- what's next for the Buckeye State?!) will soon wear the iron bracelets. Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay should put their lawyers on speed-dial, too.
Read a good overview here.
05:40 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Bush falls off the wagon
The National Enquirer (yes, that National Enquirer) reports that Bush is drinking again. No big surprise to anyone who knows about alcohol addiction in times of stress.
The article is written in the Enquirer's signature melodramatic style, using unnamed sources:
Family sources have told how the 59-year-old president was caught by First Lady Laura downing a shot of booze at their family ranch in Crawford, Texas, when he learned of the hurricane disaster.His worried wife yelled at him: "Stop, George."
Pooh-pooh it all you want. But the NYT and the Washington Post have made using unnamed sources (if not cheeseball writing) a common practice. And the National Enquirer is EXTREMELY careful not to print libel.
Maybe we should all help Georgie along; send him a bottle of Jim Beam c/o the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500. Or just shoot him a note and tell him you're glad he's fallen off the wagon, and that you're available for drinks.
05:26 PM | Comments (5) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
The Apprentice: Bill Frist
If insider trading is a prerequisite for hosting retread versions of The Apprentice, then I nominate the majority leader of Congress, Senator Bill Frist! Why?
Well, as the Washington Post reports, Dr. Right-Wing sold $13 MILLION DOLLARS worth of stock in a family business in some timing that can only be described as 1) REALLY LUCKY for Bill or 2) the result of a tip-off Frist got from his brother (who is on the board of the business) that the stock was going to take a dive.
Precisely a month later, after the stock was sold, its price tumbled 9 percent when executives in the company -- HCA Inc., which was founded by Frist's father and on whose board Frist's brother serves -- disclosed that hospital admissions of insured patients were lower than expected, depressing profits in the second quarter.[snip]
Several ethics experts and watchdogs said they found it odd that Frist could intervene to order such a sale when the HCA stock was ostensibly out of his reach in blind trusts. Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, said, "The notion that you have a blind trust but you can tell your trustee when to sell stock in it just doesn't make any sense. It means you have a seeing eye trust and not a blind trust. It's ridiculous."
The degree of outright corruption within the GOP is truly staggering. Frist bailed on a health-care company (albeit a for-profit hospital chain). He bailed on it because he didn't want to subsidize uninsured patients on the one hand while he busily dismantles Medicaid and Medicare on the other hand. I say revoke his medical license: he clearly hates helping sick people.
05:02 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
September 20, 2005
Unleashing Chang (Jeb Bush is crazy)
Courtesy of the Gainsville Sun:
After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about "unleashing Chang," his "mystical warrior" friend.Here are Bush's words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
''Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.''I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.''
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
''I'm going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,'' he said, as the crowd roared.
So when Jeb runs for Georgie's job in 2008, do you think he'll officially nominate Chang as his VP? It'd be the first Asian-born imaginary friend VP in US history, another Bush first!
Do you think Jebby, Jr., Jeb's "little brown son" as Pappy Bush called him, was "unleashing Chang" when he was caught in a parking lot with "a 17-year-old female companion fogging the car's windows and both were naked from the waist down, save Jebby's socks"?
Jebby was definitely "unleashing Chang" last week when he resisted arrest while drunk. The Daily News provides details:
John (Jebby) Bush, 21, allegedly wobbled up to Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and Austin police on duty in the city's downtown entertainment district and started questioning them about the earlier arrests of some people he knew.Bush was drunk and "he was observed to be a danger to himself and others," said TABC Capt. David Ferrero - so he was arrested too.
An arrest affidavit said Bush continually pushed against a TABC officer who was trying to handcuff him. "Subject further resisted by pushing back with his body as he was restrained at the [Austin PD] transport van," it said.
Jebby is clearly priming himself for Uncle Georgie's job.
05:57 PM | Comments (2) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
BushCo: We hire thieves and morons!
Well, they've fingered one bad apple, already:
The Iraqi government is expected to issue a warrant for the arrest of Hazem al-Shaalan, the former Defence Minister, in connection with the disappearance of more than $1 billion a senior corruption investigator in Baghdad said yesterday.
Now, who hired Mr. Shaalan, you might ask? The Independent has the answer:
Among those whom the US promoted was a man who was previously a small businessman in London before the war, called Hazem Shaalan, who became Defence Minister.Mr Shalaan says that Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq, signed off the appointment of Ziyad Cattan as the defence ministry's procurement chief. Mr Cattan, of joint Polish-Iraqi nationality, spent 27 years in Europe, returning to Iraq two days before the war in 2003. He was hired by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and became a district councillor before moving to the defence ministry.
Another hiring coup for the Bush team! They don't just hire incompetent morons, they hire outright thieves! What does Viceroy Bremer have to say about Cattan, the man the Iraqi government has an APB out for?
Mr Bremer says he has never heard of Mr Cattan.
05:39 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
George Clooney didn't do it
Reminiscent of the excellent Gulf War picture Three Kings, has a story out of Baghdad of one BILLION dollars being embezzeled from the Iraqi army.
One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.
"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.
"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."
[snip]
Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.
Ah, the "rogue elements." Like the bad apples who tortured people at Abu Ghraib, right?
05:27 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
September 19, 2005
Yo Bushie! 40 percent -- after the speech!
I'll spare you from that annoying picture of Bush looking like he just sat on a thumbtack. Here's the word from CNN/USA Today/Gallup.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush's vow to rebuild the Gulf Coast did little to help his standing with the public, only 40 percent of whom now approve of his performance in office, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.Just 41 percent of the 818 adults polled between Friday and Monday said they approved of Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while 57 percent disapproved.
And support for his management of the war in Iraq has dropped to 32 percent, with 67 percent telling pollsters they disapproved of how Bush is prosecuting the conflict.
More here. If the Democrats smarten up and grow some more spine, they'll retake a crapload of seats next year.
08:01 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
September 18, 2005
When Republicans say they're the majority...
...direct them to this new poll from Pew Research.
Reps Dems All 40 52 Men 42 48 Women 38 55 18-29 39 57 30-49 41 51 50-64 42 50 65+ 36 52 Reps 89 8 Dems 3 96 Inds 27 55 Married 49 43 Unmarried 28 64
06:11 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
