Current Events

Schwarzenegger will veto equal marriage rights bill

Apparently, the will of the people won’t prevail after all. Governor Schwarzenegger is promising to veto the equal marriage rights bill that was just passed in the California legislature.

So let me get this straight… we can’t take our civil rights issues to court, because when the courts make a ruling, they’re called “activist judges” and we’re told that we have to refer to the legislatures to make the laws.

When we go through the legislatures to make the laws, we’re vetoed by activist governors who defy the will of the people.
So basically, there’s no civil rights justice for gay people in America, at all.

I was saying last night that I don’t want to live in America anymore. I don’t feel safe here, either from natural or man-made disaster, or anti-gay attack.

Continue ReadingSchwarzenegger will veto equal marriage rights bill

8 great lies the Bush Administration is telling

Media Matters examines the facts surrounding each of these bogus Republican claims.

1. Bush: “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees”

2. Chertoff strained credulity in defense of Bush, claimed levee breaks and massive flooding came as a surprise — more than 12 hours after local media reported them

3. Brown: “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day”

4. Chertoff: “Apparently, some time on Wednesday, people started to go to the convention center spontaneously”

5. Chertoff pointed fingers: “New Orleans officials and the state officials … called for the Superdome to be the refuge of last resort”

6. Chertoff falsely minimized federal government’s role in Katrina response as subordinate to states

7. Wash. Post, Newsweek, Gingrich falsely claimed that Blanco did not declare a state of emergency

8. Gingrich falsely claimed that Nagin could “have kept water pumped out” of city had he ensured that pumps worked

Continue Reading8 great lies the Bush Administration is telling

More Media Censorship

Brian Williams of MSNBC talks about the military threatening reporters and restricting what they can and can’t put on the news.
The lie they’re telling now is that they don’t want people to see their dead relatives on the news.
I’d rather see my relative on the news than never find out what happened to them at all, which is what is really going to happen, because they’re going to suppress the information.

Continue ReadingMore Media Censorship

When people don’t want to play the blame game, they’re to blame

To quote one of today’s great minds, Jon Stewart. The press hammers Scott McClellan for the second day in a row.
As I pointed out, I can volunteer, donate and hold people’s feet to the fire all at once. I don’t need to “wait until the crisis is over” to identify who is responsible, and the “Resmuglicans” as Eric Alter called them are trying to imply that if I’m asking questions, then I must not be doing the work. I AM doing the work, and asking the questions at the same time. I am capable of multi-tasking.

Continue ReadingWhen people don’t want to play the blame game, they’re to blame

Paramedics give their account of being stranded in New Orleans

From Metamute comes this story; please read it…

by Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky

Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster zone

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.
Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct.

Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, “Get off the fucking freeway”. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims” they saw “mob” or “riot”. We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

The next days, our group of 8 walked most of the day, made contact with New Orleans Fire Department and were eventually airlifted out by an urban search and rescue team. We were dropped off near the airport and managed to catch a ride with the National Guard. The two young guardsmen apologized for the limited response of the Louisiana guards. They explained that a large section of their unit was in Iraq and that meant they were shorthanded and were unable to complete all the tasks they were assigned.

Continue ReadingParamedics give their account of being stranded in New Orleans

A first-person account of the New Orleans convention center

This is a story being passed along through e-mail. I don’t have any information on whether it’s true or not, but it rings true. It’s the account of a woman trapped at the convention center and what really happened there. From her account, the people “looting” and running around with guns were helping people and getting food for children, and they were firing at police because they believed, with some good reason due to massive miscommunication, that the authorities had brought them to the convention center to die.

From: Lisa Moore
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 10:13 AM
Subject: a survivor’s story: Katrina in New Orleans
i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise made it out of New Orleans; she’s at her brother’s in Baton Rouge. from what she told me:
her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital (historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother, her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she figured they’d be safe at the hospital. they went to Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room, two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her family were booted out; their room was given up to the new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away) to ride out the storm at her mother’s apartment. her mother stayed at the hospital.

Continue ReadingA first-person account of the New Orleans convention center

More Media Censorship: rape, murder in the Astrodome

Boing Boing is updating regularly on techie Jacob Appelbaum doing homebrewed media reports from inside the Astrodome, and their struggles to stay in the dome despite threats from authorities. They are documenting reports from evacuees of rapes, beatings and murders inside the ASTRODOME not the superdome.

Another evacuee: “Over 20 rapes per night happening inside this place. They bring in national guard for media purposes. Bush wants us to stay here to raise his ratings. Some workers are stealing the good stuff, like shoes.”

Also evacuees are telling stories that the 17th street Levees were blown up on purpose by the Army Corp of Engineers to save the French Quarter — numerous reports from evacuees on this subject.
I find this last item difficult to believe, but it does show the frame of mind of the people in the Astrodome, and what the know or understand about what’s going on.

Continue ReadingMore Media Censorship: rape, murder in the Astrodome

Which Asshole Conservative Response Is Your Favorite?

Pandagon lists all the typical Conservative responses. Here are just a couple:

Religious Conservative: God hates faggots and the rich white unmarried college kids who travel down to the French Quarter every year to drink, carouse, and deposit various genital secretions on or in each other. Thus, he killed a bunch of straight black people with families.
Economic Conservative: New Orleans was destroyed because it was a pitiful welfare state, the root cause of which was a mixture of the endemic nature of black people to rely on Big Daddy government coupled with the endemic nature of liberals to prey on black people. This explains their reluctance to pay $5 for a waterlogged Twinkie – years of socialism have stained their ability to understand that market economics require the fucking over of black people during emergencies, lest the government actually help them and turn their children into welfare-loving parasites. Gay welfare-loving parasites.

My personal favorite:
Faux-Moderate Conservatives: We’re in the midst of a crisis here – there’s plenty of blame to go around. We’ll apportion Democrats’ now and the rest to Republicans when New Orleans is rebuilt… in 2025.

Continue ReadingWhich Asshole Conservative Response Is Your Favorite?