Markos Moulitsas “Screw Them” Zuniga:

The last four days I was in an isolated cabin in Clinton, Montana, with only tenuous links to the outside world. Today was the first time I was able to truly get a handle on the New Orleans disaster, and it’s almost too staggering to comprehend. It’s donwright [sic] biblical.

This is the greatest disaster to hit our nation in most of our lifetimes. Worse than 9-11. New Orleans is underwater. Biloxi is 90 percent destroyed. Who knows how many dead. Who knows how many homeless. Who knows how many jobless. We have a bona fide refugee crisis on our hands.

There will be a time for a full accounting of what went wrong, both preparing for this thing and relief efforts afterward. I don’t know if the time is now or later. Honestly, I don’t much care. I’m too horrified by what I’m seeing today. It’s overwhelming.

I just wish that the president gave a damn about what’s happenend [sic]. Unfortunately, he’s too busy playing ‘country rock star’.

New York Times, “Old Grey Lady” Editorial:

“But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. All the focus now must be on rescuing the survivors.”

H/T:Andre3000

shocking, I tells ya!

Excellent piece on the shameful disenfranchisement of Imaginary-Americans:

David Becker, formerly a trial lawyer for the Justice Department, wrote a recent commentary for the Washington Post, entitled Reviving Jim Crow?, in which he called the Photo ID law “one of the single most discriminatory pieces of voting legislation of recent years.”

Photo ID is discriminatory.

Photo ID is the new Jim Crow.

Photo ID is the Klansman in your pocket.

Cuz heavenonlyknows, it is completely impossible for anyone with any black blood whatsoever to get a Photo ID.

And in further news:

“Lil’ Kim totally freaked out on the attendant. Some first-class seat mix-up. Called the agent a racist and pulled a ‘Do You Know Who I Am?’

“The attendant had no idea and couldn’t have really cared less.

Panic engulfed thousands of Shiites marching across a bridge in a religious procession Wednesday after rumors spread that a suicide bomber was about to attack, triggering a stampede that killed at least 695 people.

Most of the pilgrims -

predominantly women and children

- were trampled to death on the Two Imams bridge, although some jumped or were pushed into the muddy Tigris River about 30 feet below and drowned, officials said.

It was the single biggest confirmed loss of life in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Tensions already had been running high in the procession in Baghdad’s heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against a shrine where the marchers were heading. The shrine was about a mile from the bridge.

Health Ministry spokesman Qassim Yahya said 695 were killed and 180 were injured. Figures from other officials sources varied because survivors were rushed in ambulances and private cars to many hospitals, and officials were scrambling to compile accurate casualty figures.

Looking out over an Audubon Sanctuary from Borestone Mountain, near the Appalachian Trail ME - 2005

Photo: DB & K

I just woke up singing “I’m Walking on Sunshine”.
Some one punch me please!

And put me out of my misery if I break into “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Play some real poker and free bingo today!!
(what have you got to lose??)

Cindy Sheehan hugs a tent pole as the camp breaks down near President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005.
Sheehan and her anti-war supporters are taking their protest on a cross country tour.

For all their anger, the Sunnis are less unified and organized than the Kurds and Shiites who approved the constitution, Sheik [Ghazi al-]Yawar [a vice president and Sunni leader from Mosul] said, and are unlikely to defeat it. For the constitution to fail, two-thirds of the voters in at least three provinces must vote against it, but Sheik Yawar said he believed that Sunnis could muster a two-thirds vote only in Anbar, a volatile province west of Baghdad.

For that reason, Sheik Yawar said, he thought the wisest course for the Sunnis, who suffered politically after they largely boycotted the last round of elections in January, would be to focus on getting a bigger turnout at the polls in December.

“My heart says no,” Sheik Yawar said of his feelings about how to vote in the constitutional referendum. “My mind says yes, because we have to move along.”

At the President’s speech in Coronado.

If you watch the CNN video “Bush to DC to oversee Katrina relief”, in the first shot (as Bush is walking and waving) I’m in the second row of the bleachers, 3rd person from the right.  I was about 5 feet away from him at that point.

I’m having a hell of a time actually capturing the stream for myself, but I have a direct link:
here.

Windows XP computers with Windows Media Player 9 or later are guaranteed to work with this.  Anyone else, you’re taking your chances.  It’s a Windows Media file, so any linux users are definitely on their own for a solution.

If you want to see the whole speech, it’s on FOX news.

I’m looking for still shots, not much luck yet.

The President didn’t shake hands with us in the bleachers (he did shake hands with the crowd in FRONT of him).  I did shake hands with the First Lady.  Secretary Rumsfeld didn’t greet any of us, though he sat with the vets off to the right of and beside the President.  And the pre-appearance festivities included 3 songs by Mark Wills.

And I left my camera at home, too, damnit.

How awesome, though… Reagan’s ranch and a Presidential speech within 2 weeks of each other?!

The photos show him smiling and being shown around by United Arab Emirates rally champion Mohammed Bin Sulayem and the son of the king of Bahrain.

His appearance is in contrast to the frail-looking figure that walked out of court in California 11 weeks ago.

He is thought to have left the US for the Middle East soon after the verdict.

I am so sorry. We’ve been running like crazy trying to figure out how to help our friends in New Orleans, and I forgot to post and say that my mother-in-law is safe for the moment. They have no power other than a generator and no running water, but she made it through. They’ll be evacuating all of the patients to their Baton Rouge facility as quickly as possible.

Thanks for all of the prayers and comments.

from the perspective of a Rational American

By Brantley Smith
Posted On August 17, 2005
Ms. Sheehan,

By your actions over the past two weeks it is clear that you missed an important aspect of Civics 101: With rights come responsibilities. 

FBI agents nationwide have been ordered to conduct “threat assessments” of inmates who might have become radicalized in prison and could commit extremist violence upon their release, according to an FBI letter obtained by The Associated Press.

“The primary goal of these efforts is to assess and disrupt the recruitment and conversion of inmates to radicalized ideologies which advocate violence,” according to a letter from the acting assistant chief of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, Randy D. Parsons.
The agency has been trying to identify potentially disruptive groups for “some time,” according to the letter. “However, recent investigations have identified a clear need to increase the FBI’s focus and commitment in this area,” Parsons wrote in the letter, which was dated Friday and obtained Tuesday by the AP.
He said the FBI wants to increase its efforts to “identify, report, analyze and disrupt efforts by extremist persons or groups to radicalize, recruit or advocate for the purpose of violence within correctional facilities.”

I spoke of this not too long ago. Glad they’re finally getting it. Maybe for reallies this time?

It’s a Rovian plot.

You just KNOW that if he didn’t, but now that he did…

08/26/05
Jack Hamilton
Maryville TN

I have been giving a lot of thought to the on going saga of Cindy Sheehan and her protest. I can’t help but think of my own now deceased mother. It has been more than thirty six years but I still remember just like it was last week. The night I told my parents that I was being shipped to Vietnam. We were on our front porch sitting in a porch swing. I remember the anguish on her face the tears from a woman that never cried that much. I was the fourth of seven children. You have heard the feminist talk of strong women, this little woman just barely over five feet could have taught them something about strong women. Her strength had been forged living through the depression and watching her young husband sail off to battle in the South Pacific during WW11 while she waited with two children praying for his safe return. My fathers face was grim as well because he knew what was in store for me. He, like all my ancestors, have fought for this country and he dreaded it for me. Just as I dread it for these young men I see leaving now.

Despite her anguish and her fear Mom did not offer to sneak me to Canada or run over me with a car. Besides, she couldn’t drive. I am sure she loved me just as much as Cindy loved Casey Sheehan. She also loved this country; she respected this country as well. Maybe that is the difference between her and Cindy Sheehan. This country had provided the bounty that a family of nine needed to sustain it’s self. She respected a country that allowed her husband with a third grade education to educate himself and become a manager at a large railroad company. A country that allowed her and my Dad to go as far as their
dreams and abilities would take them. I do know this she loved and respected me enough that she would never have dishonored me or what I sacrificed for this country the way Cindy Sheehan has dishonored Casey.




Mom watched me struggle through the years with wounds I received in Vietnam. Not once did she blame the president. Nor did she curse the country with the words that it was not worth fighting or dying for. I can’t imagine how Cindy or others like her grew up with out love for this country but most of all with no respect for a nation that has provided so much for her. Whose very laws and Constitution protects her right to hate it and to refer to those very people that killed her son as freedom fighters. I would like to see her living in a country that the killers of her son would create. Would these Moslem murders stand by and allow her to make the same comment about their country? I don’t think so. Would they allow her to set up a protest camp and call their leader liar and other names. Calling these killers of her son freedom fighters could not have disrespected or dishonored Casey more.

I would like to ask Cindy Sheehan if the people that killed her son were freedom fighters. Then what was Casey? Was Casey then a dupe of an administration that just wanted to wage war because that had nothing better to do? I believe Casey Sheehan was smarter than his mother gives him credit for.

President George W Bush respects and honors Casey more than his own mother does.  He knows that Casey was fighting terrorists to establish freedom in a country that had suffered enough. He died trying to establish a foot hold for the basic human rights in the Middle East that will effect every man woman and child who hopefully can enjoy what we take for granted. Other than making Casey’s death the end she should be trying to make it the beginning of hope and freedom for the people of that region free from the killers that want to create and maintain an Islamic hell right here on earth.

U.S. warplanes backed Sunni Arab tribal fighters on Tuesday in what tribal leaders called an unprecedented Sunni-led offensive to drive out Abu Musab Zarqawi’s forces.

Three days of ongoing fighting in towns near the Syrian border killed at least 61 people, at least 56 of them Tuesday, said Dr. Ali Rawi, emergency-room director at the hospital in the largest city near the fighting, Qaim, about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad.

A tribal leader near the Syrian border, Sheikh Muhammed Mahallawi, said his Albu Mahal tribe opened the latest fighting against Zarqawi’s insurgents after the foreign-led militants kidnapped and killed 31 members of his tribe to punish them for joining Iraqi security forces.

“We decided—either we force them out of the city or we kill them,” with the support of U.S. bombing, Mahallawi said by telephone.

It looks as if Bush-bashing divas ‘Hanoi’ Jane Fonda and Cindy ‘Peace Mom’ Sheehan will be going head-to-head next month with dueling anti-war rallies scheduled for the same day in Washington, D.C.

***********************
Turns out the grand dame of protest politics is planning a rally for Sept. 24, the same day as Sheehan’s - in the same city, no less.

The dueling demonstrations are likely to split the Bush-hating community, with committed lefties said to be conflicted over which rally to attend.

Meanwhile, anti-war warbler Joan Baez has yet to announce which rally she’ll entertain.

Guido Cabrone in comments