Yearly Archives: 2005

Condi, I need a potty break

Yep, it’s a real photo from Reuters, of President Bush writing a note to Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the UN on September 14th. World leaders are exploring ways to revitalize the United Nations at a summit on Wednesday.

In case you can’t see it, the note says “I think I may need a bathroom break.” I didn’t know that was part of the Secretary of State’s job.

Condi, I need a potty break
Condi, I need a potty break
Continue ReadingCondi, I need a potty break

Pipelines more important than hospitals to Dick Cheney

According to the Hattiesburg America, a small Mississippi newspaper, Dick Cheney’s office called the South Mississippi Electric Power Association and ordered them to prioritize restoring power to Colonial Pipeline Co. before restoring power to two rural hospitals.

“I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating,” said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association – which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.

“I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority,” Compton said. “Our people were told to work until it was done.”

Let me reiterate what I said before about the importance of this: in the event of a nuclear terrorist attack on our country, Dick Cheney would save his pipeline before he would save your grandmother’s hospital.

I wonder if anyone died in those two hospitals while the power was off.

I’m not sure whether the South Mississippi Electric Power Association is a state or privately run facility — from what I can see they’re privately owned. I wonder, then, why they didn’t tell Cheney to go Cheney himself.

Continue ReadingPipelines more important than hospitals to Dick Cheney

Fox’s “Katrina Timeline” Omits Key Facts

Courtesy of Media Matters, Fox News tries to spin the devastating timeline that illustrates the total imcompetence of the Bush Administration by leaving off some key facts. Too bad the internet exists and we can find accurate timelines ourselves…

The September 12 edition of Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes included a deceptive on-screen Hurricane Katrina timeline that purported to cover developments in the storm and emergency response from August 24-30. Echoing a Bush administration official who falsely told The Washington Post that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) failed to declare a state of emergency, Fox’s timeline omitted Blanco’s August 26 declaration of a state of emergency while including similar declarations by the Republican governors of Mississippi and Alabama. Similarly, the timeline echoed Bush administration claims that the levee breaks were unexpected: The timeline indicated that, on August 30, three New Orleans levees broke and “water poured into [the] city” but did not mention that two levees that broke on the morning of August 29, triggering catastrophic flooding.

Seriously, can’t we sue Fox News for this kind of shit? If Dan Rather can get fired for publishing a forged memo, can’t this fake bullshit from Fox be taken to court?

Continue ReadingFox’s “Katrina Timeline” Omits Key Facts

Dodging Bullets

First Secretary Michael Chertoff said it:

I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'”

Then Gen. Richard Myers said it:

The headline, of course, in most of the papers on Tuesday — “New Orleans Dodged a Bullet,” or words to that effect. At that time, when those words were in our minds, we started working issues before we were asked, and on Tuesday, at the direction of the secretary and the deputy secretary, we went to each of the services.

Now the president is saying it (original link, no longer active – http://archive.thinkprogress.org/politics/2005/09/12/1764/bush-relaxation/):

What I was referring to is this: When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, Whew. There was a sense of relaxation. And that’s what I was referring to.
And I myself thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people probably over the airwaves say, The bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.

The trouble is, the only media source that said “Dodged a Bullet” was the ultra-conservative mini-paper, WorldNetDaily. If that’s where the president gets all his news, we’re in trouble.

And all of this begs the question… why is the President getting his information from the newspapers in the first place? Shouldn’t he be talking to weather services and officials on the ground in New Orleans? Like the Army Corps of Engineers; the guys who are actually standing there looking at the levees?

All the mainstream newspapers said this:

Katrina Headlines
katrina/headlines.jpg
Continue ReadingDodging Bullets

Bush Eats Baby, Republicans Defend President

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republicans across the nation are scrambling to defend President George W. Bush after he ate a baby during a visit to the White House kitchen early last evening.
Eye witnesses report that the president left the White House residence at around 8:05 p.m. eastern time wearing what appeared to be a crudely stitched “woman suit made from actual women”.

Continue ReadingBush Eats Baby, Republicans Defend President

Overheard remarks

Wow. I’m not the only one that’s horrified by the reactions of the people around them to the hurricane. For those of you scolding me for getting upset at my friend’s racist emails… Read this L. A. Weekly piece by Tim Wise talking about the people sitting at a table near him in a restaurant.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal — and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word — moralistically scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them — all of them, without distinction, it seemed — for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big-screen TVs.
I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues’ “Amens,” why it was that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New Orleans instead — again, all of them, in your mind — chose to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.
I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, her hair neatly coifed after using Malie Shampoo, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9/11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh.
“Well,” Buffy explained. “It’s probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and, you know, they just don’t have the same regard.”
…
Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.
…
Your God — the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are — is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps 10,000 or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.
Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mothers’ arms, and letting old people die in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street? But no, it isn’t God who’s the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is).

This is one of my favorite articles ever.

Continue ReadingOverheard remarks