Hello again.

Well as you have noticed I have not been posting much of late. Between a crazy school schedule and Jack's being sick and both Genevieve and I just being so worn down by our mutual schedules and handling the sick Jack-Jack, just haven't had the time. So, just a quick hello. When I do have time to blog I usually spend it all on Jack's page because it is time consuming to convert all the pictures so they don't use up my picture quota, get them all posted and then add what commentary I can.

Anyway. Though my rage over the Katrina debacle has subsided some, I am still in a state in which I just cannot believe what a bunch of complete bastards we have running this country. If Brownie is any indication, they are all either seriously deluded dopes or just unspeakably evil, pathological liars. Take this excerpt from Brown's testimony:

BUYER: I would like to ask some questions about the pre- landfall. So I'd like to know why did the president's federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?

BROWN: Under the law, the governor makes the request for the declaration and the governors of the states specify what areas, what counties they want included in that declaration. And, based upon the governor's request, that's the recommendation that we make to the president. So if a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that's not included in the request.

BUYER: All right. Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson's, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made -- the request -- but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president's federal emergency assistance declaration?

BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request. The governors make the request by...

BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would excluded New Orleans from the declaration?

BROWN: Yes.

BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?

BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because we have the ability to add those parishes...

Just one problem. That whole thing is a lie. The request did not exclude any of those parishes, least of all New Orleans. It was, in fact, specifically singled out in Blanco's request. Enjoy this little tidbit from the Governor's actual formal request to the Feds:

Dear Mr. President: Under the provisions of Section 501 (a) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5121-5206 (Stafford Act), and implemented by 44 CFR § 206.35, I request that you declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period beginning August 26, 2005, and continuing. The affected areas are all the southeastern parishes including the New Orleans Metropolitan area and the mid state Interstate I-49 corridor and northern parishes along the I-20 corridor that are accepting the thousands of citizens evacuating from the areas expecting to be flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

I single this out because it is a fine example of the absolutely shocking spew of lies and half truths and self-pitying bullshit this imbecilic failure of a man spewed during his hearing. It just doesn't get any more bald-faced than this, and I'm rather disappointed the actual request from the Governor was not thrown in his face with a request he personally read it into the record. He is either a perjurer or an idiot, or possibly both -- a failure at just about everything he has ever done, including lying. I really need to point this particular example out to people I meet who are right-wing dittoheads who just parrot out whatever they hear from Rush or that fat pathetic windbag Mike Gallagher or the twin douchebags of doom, Hannity and Colmes. I've actually heard people spout Brown's line of shit to my face. And when you quote the truth to them chapter and verse, they simply say, "well, that's just not true." And the conversation ends there. I mean, what? WHAT!?

I keep coming back to the only optimistic interpretation that I can: that people simply cannot believe that our country is under the thrall of the worst bunch of avaricious, venal, criminally negligent, worthless scumsucking bastards since the Gang of Four; it's just too horrifying for them. So in desperation, they turn a blind eye to the facts, to the evidence. Willful self-denial, because the truth is too much to bear.

When, Lord, when will it end?

Speaking of something being too much to bear, the impending release of far more detailed and lurid and vicious photographic evidence of the bruatlity at Abu Ghraib is, sad to say, welcome news. Not because I have any desire to have these images burned into anyone's mind, least of all my own; but because this not only is hard evidence of a foreign policy run completely amok, it is also evidence of how little respect George "Support Our Troops" Bush actually has for these poor fuckers stuck in the desert dying to establish what will, as it happens, be an Islamic republic. These poor guys and gals are risking life and limb and while I don't for a second think that anyone involved in the horrific scenes depicted should be cut any slack at all, I also believe they should never have been in that position in the first place. These people are not interrogators, not trained to be guarding hostile (or allegedly hostile) enemy prisoners of war. Why in the living hell would you put soliders on active duty in a war zone in charge of guarding the people who are trying to kill them?

But let's not be stupid, folks: either these soldiers all took the same Kool-Aid, or are all, by coincidence, depraved sociopaths, or they were all given the same orders: to treat these Iraqi men, women and even children in the most degrading and often deadly fashion, to assult them physically, mentally, sexually in a way that would make the most Saddam himself, no stranger to this behavior, blanch.

So I'd like to ask you, where do these orders come from?

Who is responsible for appointing the incompetent, heartless, selfish, whining boobs in charge of managing recovery from a national disaster?

At whose door do we lay the lies about weapons of mass destruction that led us into a brutal and costly desert war, where more and more American blood seeps into the sand daily, where now thousands of American kids have perished, all in the name of our "freedom," but ultimately for a cause none of them would volunteer for: replacing a secualr Middle Eastern dictatorship with an Islamic theocracy?

A dumpy, dimwitted little fucker by the name of George W. Bush gets the bill, folks. And when the Great Scorer comes to write against his name, what will be written will be in blood. I can honestly say I have never had less respect for any human being in my life. He is a worthless scag and those who fall in with him, from his hideous she-mantis of a wife to those who run his little crypto-fascist puppet show of a government are beyond saving. If you lie down with the pigs, you can't complain when your neighbors call you a swine.

I have friends who are conservatives. George W. Bush is no conservative. He is a filthy, pathetic little bag of ape-bones in a suit, who like his pal Brownie has literally been a failure at everything he has ever done in his life. Look it up. His wartime "service". . . his oil career . . . his governorship . . . the Texas Rangers . . . and now this revolting embarassment, this dark blotch of blood and shit on the American flag called the Bush presidency.

Ah . . . we seem to have gotten a little off-track here. I can't help myself once I get started. One more reason I don't post as much these days.

Potty time

Yahoo! News Photo

Thank God for The Onion

God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again

A storm surge of nausea -- This post rated R!

I had a stomachache all week. A nasty one, a feeling like the walls of my gut were sluicing off. Maybe it was that tamale. Or maybe it was a reaction to the swill pouring out of the mouths of filthy pigfuckers like this fat, neckless small-time radio stooge in an ill-fitting suit:

I only mention this penny-ante Rush Limbaugh wannabe because he exemplifies, to me, everything that is wrong with the Bush amen chorus in this country. Witness this unbelievable passage (don't bother reading the whole article, it's from Newsmax.com, a cheesy, pop-up laden "news site" that features cheap ads as "editor's notes" but which this guy is proud to say "runs his column"):

"And to suggest that FEMA, or the Bush administration, or the state of Louisiana, or every other governmental agency isn't doing everything it can to save as many people as possible is pure insanity." -- Mike Gallagher, "The Katrina Blame Game," http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/5/210353.shtml.

Now I only bring up this pathetic, pompous windbag to draw attention to the use of the term "Blame Game." Here are the Karl-Rove approved buzzwords used by virtually every right-wing radio shithead, spewed by every shameful asshole on Fox, and babbled by the hapless members of this criminal Presidential administration: "blame game," "finger-pointing" and "Monday morning quarterbacking."

The first two are prevalent and are literally drilled home in the actual RNC talking points memo on the Katrina disaster. And as a result they are parroted again and again and again by all Karl Rove's evil little minions. In essence, it's a straw man strategy. Twist the response by not only the left, but any concerned human being, let alone American, who has eyes to see and a brain to think who has watched the abominable unfolding of this American tragedy -- twist it into a puerile "game" of "finger-pointing." Be sure to make it seem even more juvenile by using the term "whine" a lot. Then attack the "whiners" on the basis that they're being silly and juvenile, when they are anything but.

Witness this heartening exchange, in case you missed it, between that dimwitted android Scott McLellan -- the President's mouthpiece -- and (I believe) David Gregory of NBC:

Q Scott, does the President retain confidence in his FEMA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security?

MR. McCLELLAN: And again, David, see, this is where some people want to look at the blame game issue, and finger-point. We're focused on solving problems, and we're doing everything we can --

Q What about the question?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're doing everything we can in support --

Q We know all that.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.

Q Does he retain complete confidence --

MR. McCLELLAN: We're going to continue. We appreciate the great effort that all of those at FEMA, including the head of FEMA, are doing to help the people in the region. And I'm just not going to engage in the blame game or finger-pointing that you're trying to get me to engage.

Q Okay, but that's not at all what I was asking.

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure it is. It's exactly what you're trying to play.

Q You have your same point you want to make about the blame game, which you've said enough now. I'm asking you a direct question, which you're dodging.

MR. McCLELLAN: No --

Q Does the President retain complete confidence in his Director of FEMA and Secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: I just answered the question.

Q Is the answer "yes" on both?

MR. McCLELLAN: And what you're doing is trying to engage in a game of finger-pointing.

Q There's a lot of criticism. I'm just wondering if he still has confidence.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and blame-gaming. What we're trying to do is solve problems, David. And that's where we're going to keep our focus.

Q So you're not -- you won't answer that question directly?

MR. McCLELLAN: I did. I just did.

Q No, you didn't. Yes or no? Does he have complete confidence or doesn't he?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, if you want to continue to engage in finger-pointing and blame-gaming, that's fine --

Q Scott, that's ridiculous. I'm not engaging in any of that.

MR. McCLELLAN: It's not ridiculous.

Q Don't try to accuse me of that. I'm asking you a direct question and you should answer it. Does he retain complete confidence in his FEMA Director and Secretary of Homeland Security, yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: Like I said -- that's exactly what you're engaging in.

Q I'm not engaging in anything. I'm asking you a question about what the President's views are --

MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely -- absolutely --

Q -- under pretty substantial criticism of members of his administration. Okay? And you know that, and everybody watching knows that, as well.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, everybody watching this knows, David, that you're trying to engage in a blame game.

Q I'm trying to engage?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

Q I am trying to engage?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct.

Q That's a dodge. I have a follow-up question since you dodged that one. Does the White House feel like it missed opportunities to alleviate or head off some of the damage in the New Orleans area, flood damage? Did it miss an opportunity to head any of that off?

MR. McCLELLAN: In what way?

I say this is heartening because the strategy of this administration has been simply to repeat a lie often enough until it gets accepted as the truth, and the press has bent right over and spread its cheeks for Der Fuhrer Rove and his cronies to an appalling extent. In these increasingly testy post-Katrina exchanges, fueled by reporters' experiences of seeing this horror documented by their colleagues, it seems, it finally seems like a little light might break and journalists might force these swine to be accountable.

And thank God. Because it IS the time for finger pointing and assessing blame, for ACCOUNTABILITY, when it is SO GODDAMNED EASY to see where the fault lies.

Please note as well, that the same people parroting "blame game" and "finger-pointing" are the first to turn right around and blame Mayor Nagin or Governor Blanco. Fucking animals. Fucking hypocrtical, filthy animals. Look, Nagin and Blanco and local authorities no doubt share some culpability. But this is a national disaster far beyond the capability of any locality to handle, and required a national response. Isn't this obvious?

Thank goodness for Air America Radio, although I should probably not listen to it every day like I do because each and every day some new, appalling outrage comes to light and blows my blood pressure off the map. Karl Rove, no doubt, is delighted at the whole Katrina affair -- between that and John Roberts, it's pushed his fat, guilty ass off the front burner's flame for the time being.

Here in LA we at the AFI are trying to organize a fundraiser; there's so much loss of life and livelihood; perhaps the nation hasn't seen anything on this scale since the Depression, or the Civil War, a whole vast region of people homeless, with no options. Thank goodness for the underlying decency of most Americans.

This is the thing that people like Mike Gallagher will never get. He and his ilk love to spread the lie that anyone who is angry and fed up with this stinking crime syndicate we have running this country "hates America." Cindy Sheehan "hates America," people who criticize the FEMA response "hate America." Well, you fat, ugly pig-fucker, let me tell you what I hate.

It's not America. It's the people who would pervert it. The people who would dress it in cheap lingerie, spray it with cheap perfume and pimp it out to the highest bidder if it would line their pockets. Jack her up on booze, pills and smack, treat her like a three-dollar strumpet, and when she croaked, well, shucks, it was a good ride, wasn't it Karl? We really wrung the old gal out for all she was worth. And by the way, Brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job.

That's all the Bush administration is to me. A vicious, worthless, lying pack of dirty animals -- pimps, thugs and fixers, humping Lady Liberty for all she is worth.

America deserves better, much better than this shameful treatment. Finally, possibly, the world and, especially, the idiots who think criticizing the government equates with "hating America" have seen with their own eyes the callous disregard for human life and the criminal neglect and negligence.

Don't start telling me about Bill Clinton's failings, as a dear friend did. His foreign policy was a shambles and he couldn't keep it in his pants, it's true. He did, however, build FEMA into a fast-responding powerhouse, after George the First had decimated it in almost exactly the manner his son would years later.

Here, as long as we're on the subject, are some things Clinton didn't manage to do:

Lie to the world to drag our young soldiers into an unnecessary, ill-planned, unspeakably costly and tragically deadly war;

completely destabilize the Middle East;

As a result, essentially send 2,000 young Americans and counting to their deaths to establish an Islamic republic where law is based on the Koran, granting Osama bin Laden's fondest wish;

Eradicate our budget surplus and plunge the nation into the deepest, darkest debt it's ever known;

Play golf, play guitar, eat birthday cake and make merry with donors at a fundraiser while one of America's greatest cities was disappearing under a wall of water;

Cut funding in HALF two years running intended to prevent such a tragedy from occurring;

Appoint a guy who couldn't even keep a job managing the stewards of the Arabian Horse Society and who lied on his resume to head the most important Federal office there is in the event of a disaster -- a man with ZERO experience;

Allow this same jackass to surround himself with a command structure that also features a majority of individuals with zero disaster mitigation experience;

Refuse EVER to admit a mistake . . .

. . . the list goes on and on.

I mean, sure, Bill Clinton fucked an intern, but it's better than George W. Bush fuckin' the whole country for 8 years.

How anyone could watch this Katrina devastation unfold and not instantly comprehend that the people running this country are completely fucking incompetent is beyond me.

Wanna know what really scares me? I can walk down my street with my little baby son and watch dozens of container ships stacked up like flights over O'Hare, parked out there beyond the breakwater in Long Beach, loaded top to bottom with containers of every description, from blue jeans to Hondas, waiting their turn to pull into one of the busiest ports in the world. Every ship holds hundreds of containers, and hundreds of ships pass through every week. Thousands and thousands of these containers pass within a stone's throw every week.

If there is a weak spot in our national armor, this is it. There is virtually no way to inspect these vessels thoroughly. Not only that, they are not even bothering to try. One of our biggest possible points of entry for a catastrophic terrorist attack is something smuggled in one of these containers.

This rotten administration, which ran in 2004 on a platform of keeping America safe, still, 4 years to the day after 9/11, has no coherent plan to secure our ports and I live about 2 miles from the biggest one in the country.

The fact that a fault line runs more or less under my feet doesn't make me very happy either.

But that's not what I find really, really scary.

Picture the horrors of last week's disaster for a moment. Picture a completely idiotic administration; shouldn't be too hard. Now imagine the next time something like this happens.

Now picture some terrorist bastard, probably trained in Iraq, choosing that exact time, with our armed forces committed abroad, our National Guard strained to the breaking point and all our search and rescue resources engaged in saving people from a natural catastrophe, choosing just that time to strike LA, Chicago, New York with a chemical or nuclear device.

A lot of people have been saying how worried they are that if this had been a terrorist strike, this is the best we could have done. I worry about our grotesque inability, stretched thin as we are, to cope with one disaster -- and how this leaves us wide open to another.

Oh, Jeez. 90 minutes in and we haven't even gotten to so many other things -- like excuses; Michael Cherthoff saying the reason he didn't move on New Orleans was because he picked up the paper on Tuesday and saw the headlines that "New Orleans Dodged the Bullet." From the Al Franken Show's webpage (click to enlarge):


I dunno, you tell me.

So much more to discuss and so many other millions of people discussing it. So many other thoughts swirling around in my head. I am still so angry and so upset.

I am sick of the fact that every day there is something in the paper that makes my wife cry because these rotten fucks didn't do their jobs.

I am sick of old bug-eyed farts like Barbara Bush daring, DARING to suggest that these people who have lost everything are better off sleeping in the Astrodome. I mean, how dare you! You filthy moustachioed nouveau-riche old PIG! You should be chopped up with an axe and fed to the dogs.

And to all those who poo-poo Brown's appointment and say, well, every politician appoints a few cronies, well, yeah, maybe they do, but usually it is not in a position where their complete freakin' incompetence will result in thousands of deaths. Like, appointing Uncle Lou ambassador to Togo is not liable to do much damage even if all he has ever done in life is sit quietly in a corner, staring off into space. Appointing him to head the FBI, for example, might be a problem.

And one last thing about our ludicrously stupid monkey-boy of a president. I don't think I can take it if I have to watch him try to get all pedantic with his explanations every time he is pressed on something stupid he did. Have you noticed this shit? When he is answering a question like, "Do you think the federal response is adequate?" he starts spitting out whatever his masters have told him to say as if you've just asked the stupidest question he's ever heard in his life, this answer right here that I'm givin' you is so obvious, jackass! God, it infuriates me, being talked down to by a complete nimrod.

OK. Have to end this somewhere, I mean I could go on all night. There is so much wrong with the world I have to go in and look at my baby son for a while.

It's September 11th. Go hug your baby, or wife, or friend, or yourself, or somebody less fortunate. Take care of yourself and the ones you love, because if you're expecting your government to help you, you're in for the disappointment of a lifetime.